Hello everybody!
We have reached October in what feels like record time. Maybe it is because I am wheelchair bound. My Mother, near her end, used to complain about how slowly time went. But I think we hit October awful fast this year.
We had a lot of rain, and now we have had two days of lovely sunshine. The rice looks great, even though it has not headed out yet. It will be another six weeks before that happens. But right now the foliage is all green and that seems to make everybody happy.
The trail going to my 12 rai house, garden, rice fields, and fish pond is wet and terribly potholed. So I bought a truckload of gravel. The kids will load the gravel on the dump on the front of the tractor, and they will dig deep square holes where the potholes are, and pour gravel into the holes.
We have picked up more babies, and now have 22. They little ones we are getting are cute as hell. One boy baby was being fed often with milk, and was turning into a little slob. The doctor said not to feed him so much, and we have a diet for him. He sees other babies fed at designated times, while he gets less than before, and he roars like a baby buffalo. One of these babies came from one of our girls. She cranked out the baby, a cute little guy. But she deserted him. She had taken medicine guaranteed to abort him, but none of the medicine worked. She left the baby and returned to the bright lights of Bangkok. So we are raising the baby.
With so many babies at House of Hope, Kate wants to make the deserted bakery (having sent all the bakery machines to Nazareth House, where the girls can come to study baking), into a separate home for our physically disabled kids; we have five of them. The price of the whole job, including new windows and doors, and toilets, comes to over 900,000 baht ($27,200). I think it is too expensive. But I’m not always on top of the details anymore or what is going into the restoration. But Kate knows what she wants, and what is best for these kids.
Right now, the kids are in their three week vacation. We urge the older kids to try to get a job. So, some will come work on the garden or the farm or help with the smaller kids. They get their shekels as wages when school opens.
So, everything is going relatively well at Sarnelli House. I hope all is well with you!
Gratefully,
Fr. Mike, the staff and children of Sarnelli House
