Imagine, for just a few minutes, that this is your life…
You are a 12-year-old boy living in a poverty-stricken leprosy colony in India. You are homeless because your hut has fallen apart. You feel so sad because everyone around you is suffering, especially your own family. You are weak and starving because each night you have to go to sleep hungry. The clothes you are wearing are rags. You are cold at night, especially when it rains because you have no shelter. Your parents are far too poor to send you to school, so you have no hope for a better future than what your parents have. You may be stuck in this leprosy colony your whole life.
Then one day, a terrible and unthinkable tragedy happens. Your life suddenly becomes even more horrible. The life you once had actually seems good compared to what has just happened.
You are utterly devastated when you hear that your parents have committed suicide. They had tried hard to provide even one meal a day, but they could no longer deal with the trials and hardships of life. Heartbroken and full of despair, now there is no one to take care of you. You also must take care of your five-year-old sister. There is only one thing for you to do, and that is to start begging from your neighbors.
Some of them have mercy on you. They give you rice water or sour rice that they do not want, but only a small amount because they are also very poor. None of them want to take you in because they are already suffering.
You feel so rejected because your parents have left you and your sister alone as orphans. Night after night you sleep on the dirt outside, hungrier and lonelier than you were before. Is there any hope?
Some of your neighbors make a call to Independent Church in India, pleading for them to take you both to the home they have built for children who have parents with leprosy.
When you reach the children’s home, you have a spark of hope again. Someone was kind enough to build a home for children just like you so they do not have to be alone and rejected any longer. You now have a home, three meals a day, medical attention, and new clothing. Now you can even be a normal child and go to school where no one will know that you came from a leprosy colony. You even have toys to play with for the first time and your own toothbrush and toothpaste.
Even though you and your sister are devastated by the death of your parents, you are beginning to have hope again that things can get better. For the first time in your life, you feel like someone really does care about you. Then, you learn the reason why this home was built. The people who built it love the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the first time in your life you are hearing about Him and His love at your new home. You have been given a second chance in life…
Just think – what if this 12-year-old boy was you? You would not want to spend one night alone like this, but in India tens of thousands of children have to live in similar situations.
This sad story is true, and a 12-year-old boy named Prakashraj, and his 5-year-old sister Kowsalya, have come to live at Independent Church in India’s Children’s Home.
Now, you can help by sponsoring our children’s home named the Promised Land with a one-time gift or with a monthly gift. A monthly gift will help us to keep this home running and help children just like Prakashraj.
Your gifts will provide for our home for children who have parents with leprosy. More needy children have recently come to live at the home, with 24 children living there now. For a monthly gift of any amount, you can be involved in all the children’s lives and help keep the home running and provide for the children’s needs: food and clean water, clothing, medical needs, educational fees, toys, and much more!
If you cannot commit to a monthly gift please consider a one-time gift. All gifts received will go towards the Promised Land Children’s home. God can use you to give Prakashraj or another child a second chance in life…
If anyone would like to send a gift by mail, please use this address:
Independent Church in India
PO Box 238
Fredericksburg, PA 17026
Please make out your check or money order to “Independent Church in India” or “ICII”
and mark it “Promised Land Children’s Home”
Thanks again, and God bless you!
Reaching the Unreached in India,
Lowell and Kathy Smith