16 December 2008

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

THE SERENITY PRAYER
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

The serenity prayer seems very apt for the day our group had today! Harshal and I returned to SEAM to continue working on the dormitories. We finished knocking out the bricks (Hooray!) and moved onto sifting sand so we (or someone) can make concrete a little later in the project. It was a welcome relief from the brick breaking but I found myself exhausted by the process none-the-less. However, amidst all of the hard work, we had a wonderful treat. The local Christian leaders all gathered for their monthly meeting, and this month was at SEAM. The meeting is only at SEAM once a year so we were lucky to get to see the group of local leaders as well as hear them sing their devotional music. I must say, their songs made the work go much more quickly and easily. We will be hammering the ceilings to prepare for the concrete application tomorrow
It seems like everyone in the group had a day of ups and downs. Lots of children are beginning to recognize and connect with the volunteers and things at both schools seem to be more structured which made Enid and Chris’s days run more smoothly. Our evening at SEAM ran a little more smoothly than last night and it seems we are moving in the right direction. Those kids sure are great.
After dinner, Stephen gave us a wonderful but heartbreaking explanation of the caste system here in India. It is an extremely complex issue which I think is hard to comprehend, especially for Americans. It sounds like those in the lower caste must contemplate the serenity prayer often. My wish for Stephen and his family is that they get to see major improvements in the rights of all Indian people, in practice not just on paper, in their lifetime.

Molly Luetkemeyer