Home of Love

Saturday, December 31, 2005

To all who stood behind us in 2005

On behalf of the Home of Love and our family we would like to THANK ALL OF YOU WHO GOT INVOLVED IN OUR LIVES THIS PAST YEAR. Here are a few examples of how some of you blessed us:

* Giving money for the kids to have fruit,
* Sending books for the library
* Sending a letter to each child
* Organizing a playground to be shipped to us,
* Making us a DVD and prayer cards
* Volunteering your time and money to come and see us
* Setting up funds for Christmas gifts
* Paying for a trip to the children's amusement park

Many of you prayed for us, our best blessing of all. Many gave financial gifts, which are necessary in this world for things to be built and work to continue. Much more was given and donated but I would have to write pages of examples to include them all.
Thank you also to the faithful visitors of this website, seeing your interest spurs us on to keep blogging (writing). We wish you all a Happy New Year and a great 2006!

posted by Thomas at 11:34 PM

Friday, December 30, 2005

Josiah

posted by Thomas at 10:01 AM

Thursday, December 29, 2005

South Dakotan wielding chopsticks

This Christmas dinner I found myself serving the kids with chopsticks, something I only learned a year ago! Wearing a traditional sari and bangles, I almost sort of fit in...The plates were piled high as of course everything was tried and tasted.

posted by Thomas at 5:39 PM

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Feasting on Christmas dinner

Yesterday evening, if only you could of heard the clapping of little hands and the jumping of little feet when I opened the door of the nursery with the Christmas dinner on big plates. It was a sight to behold I tell you! Here you can see for yourself, the little ones are diving into their food with much anticipation and joy. There were homemade Korean specialties, donuts, fruit, rice, chicken curry, cookies, cokes and most importantly enough for everyone to eat as much as they pleased.

posted by Thomas at 10:26 AM

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Schubo Borodin (Merry Christmas)

Home of Love is gearing up for the Christmas celebrations.

We had lots of local guests that celebrated with us on the night of the 24th. The children and teenagers of the orphanage had prepared a very nice program that was follow by a big dinner. All together we probably had about 80 guests.

Right before and for a couple minutes during the program we had a power cut, (daily occurrence for Chittagong) but when we needed electricity most it came back. We used candles to illuminate the drive and walkway.

posted by Thomas at 11:27 PM

Friday, December 23, 2005

Afternoon playtime

It's Friday afternoon and its playtime. It feels like a slice of heaven out here. The girls are batting the badminton corks back and forth, the boys are trying out a new German sport/game, the little ones are climbing on the bars, Ruben our son is playing and throwing sand (hey, stop that Ruben!). The gardens are being watered and the dry stiff clothes are being removed from the clothes lines. After battling traffic, air horns and a menagerie of people and animals on the roads, pulling into the orphanage feels like a real oasis of peace even with 50+ kids shouting and playing!

posted by Thomas at 9:42 PM

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Construction of Carpentry Shop speeds up

The roof should soon be completed. The quick building of the carpentry shop has been a real feat. It looks like the construction will be nearly finished by the time our friends from Hawaii come to start fitting it out with benches, etc. If there are any builders or carpenters reading this blogg, would you please consider coming and sharing your skills for 1-3 months with our boys? This is the vision we feel God has given us: to have foreigners come and share their wood working know-how with our boys that they might get the training a father might give them. We need volunteers to get this project going so please consider joining us in this; you don't need to speak Bangla or be a world traveler, just come as you are!

posted by Thomas at 10:57 PM

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Soccer match

This week our daughter Hannah organized a football match with her class from school against the orphanage girls. Hannah played on the orphanage side, the girls being almost like her sisters. Like last year, many from the village came out to watch the entertainment of girls' soccer. The girls from William Carey School were much bigger and older but nonetheless our girls from Home of Love won 8 to 1! We were proud of them. The WCA girls would like to have a rematch so maybe the girls' soccer season will consist this year of more than one game!

It was a great atmosphere, terrific winter temps in the 70's, and plenty of team spirit.

In the picture, the WCA girls are in maroon and Home of Love girls in white or yellow t-shirts.

posted by Thomas at 8:37 AM

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Rice Threshing

Maybe there is a better term but I will just call it "threshing" for lack of the technical word in rice farming. The rice is now dry and hanging on long stalks, the stalks are gathered and in handfuls put on the "thresher" to firmly shake the rice kernels off. The kernels fall off and then need to be sun-dried up on the roof again. After the kernels are fully dried they are taken to the mill to open the tiny husk to get the rice out. Harvesting rice is a time consuming job. We have a hired rice farmer who works for our organization; about half of the rice eaten at the Home of Love is produced on our land.

posted by Thomas at 10:21 PM

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Visiting Day

Last Thursday was visiting day in the orphanage but due to the countrywide strike few were able to come to visit. Relatives of children at "Home of Love" are invited to visit 5x a year. We will extend the visiting day to next Thursday for those who weren't able to come due to the strike.

posted by Colleen at 7:19 AM

Thursday, December 15, 2005

White skinned villagers

Our family thought you got tired of hearing about our upcoming move, so we finally got ourselves together, fixed up our house and made the plunge. We are now the white skinned villagers of Chowduryhat. We are learning many things like how pitch dark a village is a night without any lights from the city and of course how to live under the microscope of many many eyes. We are getting used to having the electricity off more often than it is on. Our own children, Hannah, Larisa and Ruben are thrilled to be out with the other kids and often leave the house before breakfast to play. We thank God for His help in getting us out there and set up, it was in His strength.

posted by Thomas at 10:54 PM

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Visitors

The residents of Home of Love always enjoy receiving guests. Each guest is warmly welcomed and greeted.

posted by Thomas at 10:06 AM

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Injustice questioned

Today one of our staff came home from the post office upset. He had gone to send off Christmas cards and wasn't feeling very "merry". The post office had complained about too many letters (6) and that they all were registered! They had asked for bakshish, as a tip is called here. The clerk requested for money to buy tea because he had to post our letters. When our staff wanted to pay, the post office told him his 500 Taka note (10$) was too big and they weren't able to give change even though they had money lying in front of them. In these cases the clerk hopes that a person will give them a tip, for giving them change. Many people behind our staff in line were helped because he didn't pay any tip and had too many letters.
I marched down to the post office after hearing about this episode and found myself in a dilapidated old hospital that hadn't been clean since the day it was built. Lines of men jostled and pushed themselves closer to the barred windows than seemed possible. I stood feeling a little lonely and trying to maintain my stature as I wondered how I could even get close to the window. Finally someone from inside saw me and gestured for me to come in through the side door. I asked to speak to the manager and was pointed a chair to sit on. As I waited for him to fill out endless ledgers and help customers I wondered if this was all such a good idea. There I was the white woman in a strange office that I had never been before, surrounding by throngs of men staring at me through squares of rod iron and other men ignoring me in the office. I looked outside and wondered how I could make a run for it... No, I was here to uphold justice and to challenge corruption like I had recently spoke about at a women's group. I had told them it starts with us not allowing corruption to happen in our own lives. So, I waited and prayed. When I got the chance to explain my purpose I was calm, eloquent (even in Bangla!) and polite. The post office workers at the window got questioned, chewed out and threatened in the local dialect. In high Bangla I was then assured something of the sort had and never would happen and I was told that if it ever did happen again (which it never did) to please inform him, the manager immediately and he would take care of it. I left knowing I had not changed the world but for one tiny minute had set a part of my world right.

posted by Colleen at 10:32 PM

Friday, December 09, 2005

Laundry

This sight might bring memories of Grandmothers drying their clothes out in the summer sun, but for us it's a daily scene. Washing clothes by hand for 10+ toddlers is quite a job, right now we only have one in cloth diapers but still have loads of laundry every day. Many of the toddlers wet the bed each night and so the sheets have to be washed daily. The older kids wash their clothes by themselves each day after taking their showers. Each bathroom has a bar of soap for washing clothes and another for taking showers.

posted by Thomas at 1:47 PM

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Debora

Many of you have seen Debora on the DVD that we made. She is excited about the upcoming soccer game with our daughters' school, it will be held at our field this month. Debora still has some dental problems that need taking care of. With so many kids there is always someone needing medical attention, new clothes, pencils, or a listening ear.

posted by Thomas at 11:57 AM

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

BOOKS!

I would like to remind or inform our readers that Home of Love is collecting books for their library. In January we will have a construction team from Hawaii, who among other things will be fitting bookshelves into our new Library room. If you would like to clean out your children's closets before the holidays and send us some used books that would be grand. We are looking for picture books and also text books with many illustrations that could be used for science or other subjects. If you are wanting to help with this project but don't have used books around, send us a voucher for Amazon and we will order the books and have them sent here.
If you are interested please send the books to this address:

Colleen Kuehn
House 30 Road 1
Hillview E/Nasirabad
4000 Chittagong
Bangladesh

We can assure you the books will be used and pored over by many many hands!

posted by Colleen at 10:23 AM

Monday, December 05, 2005

Sari clad ladies

We got all dressed up for a wedding we attended together. The gals pictured are our colleagues that we work with. Thomas and I are the only non-Koreans in our group. The one in the middle is Jinny who is in charge of the Bora primary school.
We are all wearing the traditional Sari. It is 9 yards of uncut cloth wrapped around in an elegant way to make each woman beautiful!

posted by Thomas at 9:52 PM

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Christmas Outfits

We just finished buying over 150 yards of cloth to make a new Christmas outfit for each child at the Home of Love. That was a big job! Then we had each child measured by the tailor and the different styles picked out for the dresses, salawar kameezs, shirts and trousers. The kids are looking forward to their new clothes to wear at the Christmas program on Dec. 24th. Just to give you an idea it costs about 3$ to have a shirt and pants made at the tailors for one of our older boys and less than 2$ for a dress (not including the fabric). That even beats Wal-mart!

posted by Thomas at 8:53 AM

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Out with the old, in with the new

I had to be tactful in asking to sort through the babies clothes. Our nanny in the nursery is a little stubborn and can get easily offended, but she has a heart of gold and loves the kids like her own. We began by dumping it all out to find the really nasty t-shirts and torn ones and then divided everything into piles by sizes. I loving requested that she keep the kids' clothes always like this, but she gave me a scared look and I changed my sentence, to asking her to at least try to keep them organized! The normal practice is to bring the clothes from the roof and shove them in the drawers wherever they can find room. I know that all good housewives reading this are cringing... my challenge continues as I attempt to teach our staff to do things properly, making a habit of doing right. This is not easy.

posted by Colleen at 7:47 AM