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NEWSLETTER MAY/JUNE 2007 - VOLUME 29
INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN INDIA PO BOX 238 FREDERICKSBURG, PA 17026
website: www.indchurch.org email:info@indchurch.org Phone (717) 865-7885
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A Child's Dream Comes True...
Raji lived in a remote village in India. Like many village children, Raji was well aware of what hardship and suffering was like. She and her family lived in a small hut that leaked during the rainy season and her family had to become virtually homeless. Just to eat each day was a struggle. Many times Raji, her three brothers, her three sisters, and her pregnant mother would go to bed cold and hungry. Life seemed very unfair to Raji.
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Raji's job is to take care of her baby brother.
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Just months ago, her father was at work cutting firewood to support the family when he was tragically killed by a poisonous snakebite. Raji's family had been very poor before his death, but now things were far worse.
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NEWSLETTER
MAY/JUNE 2007
Volume 29
In this Issue of:
FINDING LOST SOULS
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Editors and Writers...
Lowell and Kathy Smith
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Raji was only ten years old, and her chore was taking care of her baby brother. No time for play, Raji's daily life was filled with hard work and responsibility. She was a child taking care of a child while her eight-month-pregnant mother and older sister walked two miles, chopped wood from dawn to dusk, and carried the wood back two miles just to provide a little food for the family that day. If Raji's mother was unable to go to work one day, then neither she nor her children could eat that day. Each day, Raji had to take her baby brother to school with her, bring him home, bathe him, feed him, and care for him, until her exhausted mother returned home at dark so she could buy food with the small amount of money she had earned that day from cutting wood.
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The first time ICII visited Raji's family, they witnessed a heartbreaking sight. Raji's little sister (in above photo) was scraping the last kernels of rice from the pot to fill her empty stomach.
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Raji's sister Kanni cooking rice.
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Raji's twelve-year-old sister named Kanni worked very hard also. After school, Kanni would have to carry enough water to her hut from the nearest well so she could wash the dishes and so her family could bathe. After this, she would begin to chop enough firewood to cook a sparse meal. Cheap, stale government-rationed rice was the family's main diet. Even though it tasted bad, it was much better than starving.
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| Whenever Raji's mother could afford any vegetables to put over their rice, they would have to make the small basket of old wilted vegetables last up to ten days for the eight members in her family. Raji's younger brother Alaguraja was often getting infections, but they were too poor to get him proper medical care, so the infections only grew worse. |
The time would soon come for Raji's mother to deliver the baby. No one in the family knew what was going to happen to them then, because during that time her mother would not be able to work. Raji didn't want to think ahead that far. Instead, she dreamed desperately of better days.
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ICII began bringing Raji's family rice, fruits and vegetables.
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