Slum Schools

I talked to India last night and was excited to hear that a small school was started up in a slum area of our city.

There are several families in our church who are from the slums, basically squatters and day laborers. They usually have 4 or 5 small children who do not attend any school. I'd often see the kids roaming around the city picking through trash, looking for something they could sell (plastic bags, metal, paper) and get money for it.

Of course this doesn't sound like an ideal life, but the children - left in the lifestyle too long - are habituated to it and eventually do not want to leave it. We find this with adults who no matter how much we want to help them, don't want to leave the squalor.

Since Tuesday of this week we have started a small school for children 3 to 10 years old. It starts off with a Christian action song and prayer and then there is teaching. Right now they have a blackboard and some charts showing the Hindi, Gujarati and English alphabets. I think our pastor said that there are about 30 children already.

He and about 6 others from church go every evening to gather the children (probably takes up half the time) and then they teach. Please pray for this ministry. It is just developing but we'll see where God is going to take it. I'll try to get some pictures sent to me to share. I want to see it too!