ANOTHER NEW TEAM AND ANOTHER MILESTONE!
Sri Lanka '07 is the official start of a new partnership with Cherith International, an organization started by our good friends Harry and Jenny vanBurik who are hard at work to establish the "House of Hope" Children's Home in Central Sri Lanka (pictured above). See there work here.
MissionGuides is now the official short-term missions service for Cherith and has projects planned for the next five years with them. We are looking forward to what will happen!
This first team is quite international in flavor. 11 from the United States joined 2 from Trinidad who met 1 from the Netherlands for a week of building a playground for the Children's Home and good relationships for the future.
SWEET BEGINNINGS
If our last trip was to re-establish ties to Sri Lanka, this project was to deepen and broaden those ties and lay a foundation for years of future service.
After 23 hours of flying to Colombo, via Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Singapore the team arrived in Sri Lanka where a bus took us the final 4 hours into the highlands. Our long-time friend Harry vanBurik met us for a week of service to orphaned kids in Meepitiya, near Nawalapitiya in south central Sri Lanka.
WELCOME TO NAWALAPITIYA
Nawalapitiya is our home-away-from-home and is a busy place virtually fizzing with activity. Three-wheeler taxis, cars, trucks, oxcarts, and thousands of pedestrians fill the streets every day.
It is a city of nearly 14,000 people about 30 kilometers from Kandy and is populated by a wide variety of faiths. Within a 10 minute walk of the Children's Home one can see Catholic churches, Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Buddhist temples and an evangelical church.
It is also a favored city of the current president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose political base gets a big boost from the area. He spoke at a rally in the city park while we were here.
GET TO WORK!
Our primary function this week is to complete the construction of a playground at the Cherith International Children's Home. The ground was prepared and our job was to paint the play tower (on the left), put its roof on then set the play equipment in place when it arrived from the fabricators.
Fighting jetlag, rainy season downpours and fluctuating power current proved challenging, but everything worked out.
AYUBOWAN!
Ayubowan is a typical Sri Lankan greeting one receives that literally means, "may you live long."
The asian elephant is a long-lived beast and one of the important resources from Sri Lanka's past. It's only natural for them to welcome us too.
MEET THE NEIGHBORS
The closest neighbor to the Children's Home is a local monk who is more than happy to have an orphanage in his back yard (He says it's much better than the farmer and his 200 goats!)
We're still trying to find the words to describe the very unique evening we spent with him when he showed us his temple complex, offered us tea, and answered our questions about his faith.
He will be a strong supporter of our work and an interesting person to get to know.
MEET THE OTHER NEIGHBORS
Yikes! It's amazing how one can so quickly become used to the most unusual stuff.
Sri Lanka, especially during the rainy season, is home to all sorts of bugs, moths, birds, lizards, monkeys, leeches (!) and millipedes who make themselves comfortable near our home.
They like to say "ayubowan" too, and we make the best of it (and get extra points with the grandkids by getting the perfect picture).
SEEING SOME PROGRESS
Having to share the power cords and waiting for the rain to stop makes the schedule hard to keep, but the team rises to all of the challenges and gets the work done..and still enjoys one another!