Kerala Adventures

On Tuesday we visited a large girls orphanage called Rehoboth in Kerala.  It is a very old Christian orphanage that is managed by a New Zealand lady called Phyllis who has been living in India for the last 50 years.  There is a big 110th anniversary this coming weekend to celebrate the Lord's faithfulness over the orphanage.   An Indian couple from our assembly in Auckland, Thomas and Sheela Eapen, know Phyllis very well and had been invited to this celebration, and since I happened to be in India at the same time I was invited also.  Visit Rehoboth's website for more information: http://www.rehobothindia.com/

The meaning of the name Rehoboth is "The Lord has made room for us"

We were shown all around the orphanage which is a huge section of land in the middle of a busy urban district.  It has very well maintained buildings, a primary school, a theological bible school, and many trees everywhere.  At one point there were 200 girls at the orphanage but now there is about 140.  They have faced pressure from the government to reduce the number and many other restrictions which makes things difficult.

It was incredible to see the faithfulness of this lady Phyllis and how the Lord has used her to bring about this amazing work.  She had many stories of how the Lord has provided in incredible ways, it's like something you would read out of a George Muller book.

In the afternoon we visited the Kerala Zoo and Elephant sanctuary which was quite good.  The large snakes and peacocks at the Zoo were impressive and there were about 50 Elephants at the sanctuary which was interesting to see.   However since the Indian standards for keeping animals captive is much different to New Zealand most of the animals looked quite depressed just sitting in a cage all day.

Andrew and his friends standing in front of the palace 

On Wednesday me, Andrew, and a few of his friends headed out to a place called Fort Kochi which is on the south west point of India.  It was about a two hour drive from where we were staying.  On the way we briefly visited the largest mall in India which is called LuLu Mall, then headed onwards and visited a large palace where an Indian King used to rule which was really interesting.  There were large paintings, hand crafted ornaments, old biblical scrolls, weapons, and the Kings jewels. We saw a very large golden crown which the King would have worn, it had all different types of jewels and diamonds attached to it which was really amazing to see.  Unfortunately it was an extremely hot day in Kerala and any movement outside would make you sweat like mad.

The Paradesi Synagogue

We drove further onwards and crossed a large bridge to a popular tourist island.  It was a very unique place because a long time ago the Dutch had settled there so everything was quite different.  We went inside the first Jewish synagogue in India, it's called the Paradesi Synagogue and was built in 1568, which was very interesting to see.  I couldn't get over how there were so many European tourists everywhere, I have never seen so many in India before. The streets were lined with small shops selling everything you could imagine. 

Sitting outside the St. Frances Church

Later on we visited an old 15th century Catholic Church called St. Frances Church and then walked around the waterfront.  We saw these huge Chinese fishing nets that would dip into the water and lift out large amounts of fish, they were quite unique.

Large Chinese fishing nets lined the coast

 Sitting by a south Indian beach

In the evening we were invited around to have dinner at the house of one of the families from Andrew's church assembly which was very nice.  Tomorrow we had planned to go with several others from the church on a 8 hour drive to hand out gospel tracts to villages but the man organising our vehicle has been very sick so we had to cancel.  Instead I've been invited to stay a few nights at the Rehoboth orphanage and help out where I can over the celebration weekend.

Samuel and Elamma Matthew with their son and his wife