Fwd: Day of Rejoicing

[Grace Shih]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bob and Bobbie Clinton <bobandbob...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 11:03 AM
Subject: Day of Rejoicing
To: Friends and Family <bobandbob...@gmail.com>

Dear Praying Friends,

We opened the First Love Children's Home In Siliguri, India on Friday afternoon!  PTL!  Rather than write about it, we decided that we would just send you some pictures.  Enjoy!

Children'sChildren and staff waiting to see the inside of their new home.

Joe Clinton and Ralph Peterson, representing the work team and on behalf of all of our partners, cut the ribbon to the new home with Deep Shrestha, our construction manager.  

Children rush in to see their new rooms!   As soon as the ribbon was cut, they were off to the races!  

(The staff instructed the kids to "walk not run and don't go wild.")

Baru sees the room she will share with her husband Anil and is overwhelmed with joy!  When she saw their names on a card on the bed, written in English and devanagri, she began to cry.  She exclaimed "malaai, malaai?' (for me, for me).  Then she saw the hanging unit and ran over to touch it, then turned toward me (Bobbie) and gave me a tight hug as she wept on my shoulder.  

Hallway in the girls' wing.   The boys wing looks the same.   The boys are on the ground floor and the girls on the second floor.

Each bedroom has three bunk-beds, a 6-drawer dresser, book shelves, a wall unit with a bar to hang up clothes, and an end table.  The team decided to make 24 new bunk-beds rather than 12 so that all of the kids would get a new bed!   We also bought new mattresses, sheets, pillows, and a nice rug for each room with funds that were donated last week by several of you!

Boys' bathroom.   Besides the four basins, there are 4 toilets and 3 showers.

Bobbie cuts the ribbon and takes the covering off to reveal the children's' new TV.   I think they were excited :-)

The first meal in the dining room - pizza delivered by Dominos!   

The tables and benches were made by the team.

This was a day that our team, children and staff will remember for a very long time.  The children even asked Tara when we were leaving so they could go to bed! They had never asked to go to bed before.  The boys watched a soccer game on the new TV and the girls chatted and laughed in their rooms.  They all took several trips to look at their new bathrooms too.  They repeated "we can't believe it" several times.  

Thank you for your prayers, financial donations and all the work of the people on the mission teams to make this day possible.  We appreciate your partnership very much.  

Love, Bob and Bobbie     PS: Bob began this email and I finished it.  :-)  

Saturday morning, before we left for the airport to return to Delhi, Bob had a little motorcycle accident which caused a few injuries.  We decided to wait to go to a hospital to get checked out until the team was safely on their way back to the US.  He had several x-rays and a ct scan.  The diagnosis is "no broken bones".  However, the large hematomas will require a bit of bed rest and ice compresses to promote healing. We were very happy with this news.  He can smile, even though the tunic and pants he was given were way to small.