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/
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Large Chinese fishing nets lined the coast |
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| 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.
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| Samuel and Elamma Matthew with their son and his wife |
