I realized that we’ve shared a lot of stories the last couple months and wanted to update where various people are at right now.

Alia returned home on Friday. She looks healthier with more color to her face than she did before, and her arm infection seems to have completely cleared up. But she is still very skinny and weak, suffering and doesn’t move much, doesn’t talk much. The doctors say she’ll start talking more as she regains her strength. It looks like she still has a difficult road ahead, and I am concerned about lingering long-term effects as well as the possibility of relapse. Later this week she will go back to the hospital for a checkup on her progress. Please pray for her. Also, her little sister who has had a fever for three weeks is not getting better. Doctors have placed her on anti-malarial medication even though they don’t know what it is yet and I am personally doubting that malaria is the issue.

The water situation in our slum got momentarily even worse as the 200m distant well I had been using broke down. We spent a couple days drinking filtered city water (currently coming in quite clear), which I thought was fine but Rosey said tasted weird. Thankfully the well has begun working again. Chennai and other regions of south India continue to experience a major water crisis, but heavy rains this week gave the city a 10-day supply of water. Unfortunately reservoirs remain at just 0.13% of capacity.

After writing about our power situation, we suddenly hit the worst stretch of electricity outages in several years, with power going out up to six times a day, sometimes for only five minutes but on other occasions for as long as 3-4 hours. That lasted about two weeks, and now the situation is fine again with outages once again rare. Cool weather over the last week has made power outages less concerning anyway.

The boys who ended up on the train and missing for two days have continued to attend my literacy classes daily, coming far more consistently and enthusiastically than they had before the incident, and are progressing in their reading. They are making me teach them origami as a condition for coming – so far we’ve done cranes, frogs, paper airplanes, flowers, and snakes, and tied those in with lessons on subjects from nuclear war to local wildlife. The girls from Rosey’s safehouse who I mentioned in the same post also returned safe. It turned out that one of them had run away to secretly marry a juice seller, while the other one also disappeared for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear.

Aslam has finished his courses of chemotherapy with very little side effects, and has been feeling great. Last Monday he went to the doctor for blood tests and a CT scan, and no signs of cancer were found. It feels like a deep blessing from God. He will continue to follow a more limited (and much healthier) diet, and will return to the hospital for monitoring tests on a monthly basis. Aslam was able to move into a smaller and much cheaper room in the same apartment block, which should be a far better situation for him going forward than moving to the slum would have been.

Please keep us all in your thoughts, and keep pondering how we can work together to build towards something different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hospital to monitor if the cancer returns. In order to save money his family is living in a much smaller room than  before in the same block that they were already living. Please continue to pray.