BUSY DECEMBER BUT ALSO HAPPY DECEMBER

The young , energetic and eager to serve The Lord through community services

are ready to leave on Dec 11th for Kupang (  To Roslin Orphanage)

We have been so busy with the preparations for the visits of Singaporean youth to Roslin Orphanage. The Singapore Government, through the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS), has been sending their youth to our orphanage regularly over the past few years. In 2006, the first group of 16 from Singapore, sponsored by MCYS, spent two weeks with us doing much community service.

This December 2011 we are assigned to work together with three groups of youth who are eager to work and learn together and are trying to be useful to the society as well. We have already had our quality time with the first group from December 1st to 7th and the second group is currently with us at the orphanage (from December 7th to 13th). The third group will be with us from Dec 13th to 19^th.

Yes, we are an orphanage but there are so many things to do beyond just managing the orphanage. As an orphanage alone we are busy enough, looking after the children and everything about the orphanage. But we are also dealing with the farm work, paddy field and engaging in many other services to the society (with a focus on enhancing the education and healthcare needs of the village people, and in the dry season we are always doing food ministry to places inclined to food shortages, even to the point of famine).

With the first group we have been doing some farm work and lots and lots of educational activities with the orphanage children.

On December 11th we will be having 12 young people who are so dynamic in their thinking, eager to share what they know and ready to sweat as well. These youth, from the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Singapore, will be helping us to set up our new computer room which was completed just six weeks ago. Praise the Lord for His arrangements which are always timely and according to what we need! We are hoping that the Roslin Orphanage's children will be able to have access to the outside world through the internet (we will start installing the internet on December 14th).We are hoping that the children will be able to use it for the good reasons only. We will make sure to ask the internet service provider to place the filter properly so that the negative effects of the internet can be minimized. Nowadays it is very easy for us to receive unwanted websites which the children would be very vulnerable to.

Also on December 11^th, there will be four more persons, made up of our DBS Bank friends who were with us in May 2011, joining us again.

The first group that was sent by the Singapore Government has returned and here are some of their comments:

A few more messages were sent to us and lots of phone calls were received too, expressing their intention to come back again. We are so privileged to have them and we are hoping that we can do a lot more together in the future. 

Actually we cannot offer anything in particular and we were only sharing what we have with them, including the farm work, the cooking preparation for everyone and all the day-to-day activities. Nothing more and nothing less, we are just doing things together for our needs. The first day after the second group’s arrival, they were helping us with the rice harvest. Today the second group is doing more farm work and will only be at the beach with all of the Roslin Orphanage's children tomorrow. The beach in Kupang area is rather empty if we compare it with some other beaches in Indonesia. To some extent we feel that we are the owners of the beach as there isn't anyone else at the beach most of the time. Yes we are doing work but we have not forgotten to have fun together also. It will be a privilege to the orphanage to have you to do these activities together with us.

to be continued