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!

Bethany UMC Gives Reading Books to Orphans!

Thank you Bethany UMC for all the wonderful Tamil reading books. They match our curriculum! We have never had reading books before, so we are excited, even though we don't always show it (culturally people don't always smile for pictures in India).

Kindergarten - 2nd standard classes get new educational English instruction DVDs

The 3-7 year olds at MG now have new English DVDs to help them practice as they learn spoken English in school. Pictured here is the Upper Kindergarten group (UKG).

A new visitor to MG shares his skills and talents with our orphans and students.

Mr. Kim Sueng, a talented youth from England came to visit the Miracle Garden children this month. Staying on campus for 2 weeks, he taught the children soccer skills, helped out in school, helped them with their English, and played many games with them. His outgoing personality and energy were appreciated by all the kids. They will miss him for sure! Thank you, Kim, for sharing the love of God with our orphans during your visit. :-)

A New Playmate from England!

Mr. Kim Seung teaches the MG kids how to play soccer (or in his terms, "football.")

Young Man Kim Seung Helps with Daily Chores at MG

Older MG boys showing off uniforms

Miracle Garden Elementary School kids and teachers

Miracle Garden School - Highly Qualified Teachers and Principal

Top to bottom:

1. Ms. Chitralekha, BS, 4th grade, Math for 3rd, English for 3rd – 5th, Science for 5th

2. Ms. Easwari, BA/Bed. Kindergarten – Tamil & Math

3. Mrs. Poongothai, BA/BEd., MA  Kindergarten - all subjects

4. Principal: Mrs. Shemalatha, BS/BEd, MS, MPhil, Teaches Value Education & General Knowledge 1st-5th

5. Mrs. Stella Mary, BS/BEd., 2nd Grade, English/Science for K-2nd

6. Ms. Subha, BS/BEd., 1st grade, Math for 1st – 2nd, Tamil for 1st – 5th grade

7. Mrs. Geetha, BS/BEd., MS, 3rd & 5th Grades, Computers for 1st – 5th, Math for 4th – 5th, Science for 3rd – 4th

Thanks to several donors, our kids will get fish for dinner weekly in August.

A large bucket of sardines.

Small electrical fire damages electric line and water tank motor for girls' dorm.

We had a minor scare with a major expense on the1st of July. The water motor in the girls building caused a short and the girls building line caught on fire in the electrical room.

One of the dogs noticed a lot of smoke started to bark and draw attention to it. Then we put out the fire by beating it down with rice sacks. But it ate away a lot of wiring. We did get electric back on in the entire campus except the girls building. (The plumber did a temporary fix). Getting an electrician to come out on a weekend is hard. Thankfully the plumber is on call for us 24hrs and can do small fix up jobs. Then again the big bore well motor runs on that girls' line, so we could not use the bore well motor. We ran out of water for  2 days. The older kids had to help dip water from the holding tanks with buckets. Finally, we brought in a fully qualified electrician and got it fixed. But we need full overhaul of our electrical lines. The electrician warns more fires are sure to break out. Our plans for Miracle Garden, developed and installed 10 years ago, did not take into account all the expansion and additional power we need and use. So John has asked him to start redesigning & fixing it this month. The girls water motor was not that old, just a year or a little older maybe, but it is fully burnt. Thanks to help from sponsors and donors in England, we were able to purchase a new tank motor for the girls' dorm, and they are up and running again. Thank God that dog caught the fire on time, or we might have had a really bad event.