Almost there

My apologies to all you faithful Tiffin followers out there, apparently Blogspot got too risque for China’s taste. Which means that it’s official, I am no longer in ‘our China’ but am in ‘my America’ for a few days. I arrived in Greenville on June 1st and depart for Malapurram on June 8th. I know it’s not a long stay, but it’s enough time to see my beautiful friends and family and pack up my India stuff, drop off my China stuff and be on my way. That’s enough about me, now on to the good stuff...

There have been a lot of changes since my last post, some which seemingly could have been disastrous but of course God took care of us. I’ll start at the beginning: A few weeks ago Joseph had the governmental meeting I was telling you about before. The one where there were supposed to be no problems, yeah right, this is India (or insert any other foreign country), there are always problems. The meeting concluded with Joseph being told that I could not in live in the house with everyone, and that we could not use the house we had so lovingly chosen for Jubilee. On top of that we cannot be fully licensed and governmentally supported until we have our own land. Joseph decided to tackle the dilemma with my living situation first (THANK YOU!) It turned out that I was only disallowed from living in that specific house because it is similar to an apartment. My guess for this is that they didn’t want to make anyone else share living quarters with a foreigner unless they’d chosen it for themselves. So we needed a single living house. Joseph again went searching for a home, and what do you know, they found a GREAT house! Not only is it great, but it was the only house out there to be rented! It’s only about 15 minutes by foot from our previous house, which means we are still close to a good school and able to get to town easily. The house is 500 rupees (abt. $10) more a month but is definitely worth it. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms like our last home, but each room is bigger than the last. The kitchen is large with a storage room attached, there is a living room area, plus a formal sitting room type place, it is outside the city further so it’s very quiet and there’s a nice fence around our...acre of land!!! We have enough room to garden, for the kids to play, have some chickens and goats, and there are already big coconut trees there. It is exactly what we had been praying for before we got our last house. God’s timing is impeccable. The new house has been checked by the government officials and it’s good for a children’s home, and for me to live. No matter what house we will be living in, as long as we are renting we won’t be able to be fully licensed. The officials were positive about us being able to get land with time, and that we are still able to work and that’s not a problem.

Things have also changed with the kids. Since Riny and Joseph are new to the area and Christian, finding children in the first place wasn’t easy. Of the 6 children we were going to take in, only 3 have followed through. The current guardians of the other 3 were afraid of the children being converted to Christianity. Cletus and Clint are still keepers, along with Bovas, one of the original 6. Along with those 3 we’ll have 2 more. Kribba, Bovas’ 5 year old sister and our only girl, and Jino, another 6 year old boy. I’ve gotten the chance to hear them on skype, and they sound so adorable! I can’t wait to be there with them.

Along with other good news, we now have some outside sponsorship! Nothing is finalized yet, but things are looking promising for support of our monthly food budget. This is wonderful news since food takes a chunk out of the budget each month. God is blessing Jubilee like crazy!

I will arrive in Malapurram on June 10th and hopefully I’ll have internet soon thereafter. I’ll update when I arrive and am somewhat settled in :).

Love to all!