Christmas Pageant

Kids put on a show for Christmas

Kids with their Christmas gifts and toys,

3 Special Meals on Christmas Day

kids enjoyed 3 special meals on Christmas Day. Breakfast was Dosa and Idli, Lunch was Special Veg-meals and for Dinner it was Chicken Biriyani.

Thanks Sky Class UK for raising funds to help Miracle Garden Kids!

Thank you Judy Loveless and her sewing group for donating dresses & T-shirts for the girls!

Vitamins keep us healthy! Thank you for sending us Vitamins!

As John copies the tests, the kids study one last time before bed.

Boys and girls alike read and practice writing facts and figures prior to quarterly exams in September.

Praise God, we have our new copy machine, thanks to the Dorothea Haus Ross Foundation!

John stands next to our new copier and gets ready to copy all the teachers' quarterly exam papers.

New Uniforms for Physical Education!

Thank you sponsor, Beverly Davies, for generously helping purchase the government-required P.E. uniforms for our kids.

New Bethany UMC School Classrooms are finally coming up on campus!

Here you see the construction at various stages for the two classrooms being erected by a generous grant from Bethany UMC in Wisconsin. We can't wait until the rainy season dries up a bit so we can paint and install electric wiring! The kids are so excited to watch their own classrooms being built brick by brick. When the two rooms are completed, they will house either the Pre-K through 2nd Grades, or 6th and 7th grades. Thank you BUMC for your patience in this project, as obtaining building approval took much longer than expected.

Thank you to friends and sponsors who send things to the kids!

Lancaster Presbyterian Church Jr. High Youth Group sent Bible story cassettes for our kids to listen to - what fun, Thank you! They did get some help with translation. :-)
And sponsor Julia Stevens sent some Sunday School materials to her sponsored child, Karuppusamy, in which she has written some of the material.
THANK YOU to everyone who sends gifts, materials, and other blessings to the kids! They are thrilled to get mail and packages.

Thank you Kettle Falls Community Church for the desperately needed children's vitamins!

All-School Drama related to Independence Day

Indian Independence Day celebration

A flag-raising ceremony was held during school, including special hats and hand-held flags for the kids to keep. August 15th is the date India celebrates its independence.

Kids get their new school IDs. Are they proud or what?

Tsunami survivor and MG graduate/staff member Anis takes baptism

Anis, who came back to work at MG last year as the watchman, took baptism this past weekend to proclaim his faith in Christ. :-) Every Sunday two pastors come and conduct Church for kids and staff. Once a month they also give communion to baptized members of the staff and kids who have taken baptism.

Textbook Problems in Tamil Nadu (and see our kids caught reading)

Textbook Problems in Tamil Nadu in July 2011

The new Tamil Nadu State government, which took over in May, refused to pass out brand new, uniform school textbooks prepared under the previous government. They went to court to try and prevent distribution of the textbooks, and they lost. They then appealed to the Supreme Court. At Miracle Garden, school started mid-June without any text books – teachers had been told to just wing it. On July 22nd, the Supreme Court denied the appeal and told the govt. to distribute the text books by August 2nd. On July 29th, the deadline was extended to Aug. 5th. Hopefully, as you read this letter, our MG kids will be reading their textbooks for this school year.

News taken from the following links:

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/07/20/in-tamil-nadu-school-without-textbooks/
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2281875.ece?homepage=true
http://zeenews.india.com/news/tamil-nadu/sc-extends-deadline-for-text-books-distribution_722801.html

One positive change in the new school textbooks, is that there will be a “uniform” curriculum throughout the state. This is similar to the Common Core Curriculum or Core Standards we find here in the US. And a recent addition to this uniform curriculum was the introduction of recommended reading books that supplement the classroom curriculum for each grade level, both in English and in Tamil. Such books have been around in the US for many years, but are a recent addition to the Tamil Nadu state curriculum.

Here is the awesome part of this story - God, in His infinite wisdom, inspired the Director of Sunday School at Bethany UMC in Madison, WI, to collect funds TO PURCHASE CURRICULUM-RELATED READING BOOKS in India for our children. And this inspiration came in early Spring, before the new curriculum was released and before any of the MG teachers even knew about the supplemental books. Now Bethany has helped us purchase these supplemental books, thus blessing our children with reading material that many other schools in Tamil Nadu probably will not have this year. Thank you Bethany UMC Sunday School for listening to the leading of God in your collections and for blessing our orphans with your gift.

Enjoying our books!