Sarah

In our recently mailed newsletter I promised a picture of Amudha who changed her name to Sarah, we did this to save the cost of color printing, and to lead people to the website. Sorry I do not have a great photo I will make up for it by linking to some other photos. Sarah is on the right and her daughter Chellam is on the left.

Sarah has a husband, Ramiah, and two daughters, Chellam and Radha Subramani.

To start at the beginning Amudha has some construction tools that she rents out. Many people come from the rural area to the city during the dry season to earn extra income before going back to the farms later. Take a look at this picture, and this one, and this image, or even do your own Google Image search. There is a good chance that she rents out basic tools such as baskets as well as more advanced tools also.

For 15 years she has had swelling in her arms, this would happen whenever she ate certain tubers or vegetables, and if she touched cold water. She had to wash and bathe in only hot water. Doctors and requests of healing at temples was unable to heal her. (She was active in her Hindu faith.)

She joined a Growing Opportunity trust group 2-1/2 years ago along with her daughter Chellam. A year later Chellam (Chellam was introduced to the Christian faith in 1999) and the GOF Client Relation Officer, Anuradha, prayed to Jesus for healing of Radha Subramani's daughter who had Bone Tuberculosis. After seeing her granddaughter healed she asked Anuradha to pray for her healing also. Soon after she was able to eat food that had caused pain before, she can now wash with cold water also.

Amudha began attending a local church, learning more about Jesus and then followed in baptism to become a Christian. And as is common with many low caste believers she changed her name to Sarah. She removed her Hindu shrine from her house, with her husbands permission. And while he has not changed faith he told her that on the job as a construction worker he was saved from a deadly fall by her new God.

I want to step back and point out how GOF was involved. They did not ask Amudha to change faith to get a loan. But given the request to pray they did not deny. They let the supernatural power of Jesus be a strong witness to Christianity.

Technical Details

Every thing I say here about flights is hypothetical until we buy our tickets and that will not happen until $25,000 of funds are pledged.

We had a request to first visit Pune (Poo-ney) from the first to 3rd of August for orientation.

It is interesting to see that the first 18 hours of flight are common to our friends the GCC India team. While their flights are set, ours is just research until another $1,600 in support funding is given.

For the three of us:
Chicago to Bombay July 29th $2292 on Air India 124
Bus to Pune $37
5 nights stay at guest house meals included $111 total.
Flight from Pune to Bangalor to Chennai August 4th $468 on kingfisher

total =$2908

Now granted I would love to ride Singapore Air (one of very few 5 star airlines) but what Air India does in 18 hours will take about 36 with layovers.

We are also working on finding luggage, if you have any LARGE suitcases you would like to donate to the cause we would be thankful, you may get them back in a year.

We did find out that it would work well for Nancy and I to take an all day trip into Chicago, drop off our Visa forms for the India Consulate in the morning, and pick up in the late afternoon. We still have some questions about whether to get a 6 month 1 year or 5 year visa. We need to leave India every 180 days anyway but will there be less hassles if we get a longer visa?

Also we also sent out an update letter. On the cover we had a short story about Amudha, I will fill in some more details about her in my next post.