What Have We Accomplished?

We have come to the end of our year. It has been both an honor and a privilege to work with the wonderful faculty, staff, and kids of Rising Star Outreach and Peery Matriculation School for Rising Stars. Gordon has served as school principal and school director. Vickie has served as hostel warden, medical clinic aide, and assistant to the doctors for our leprosy colony medical outreach. Let us share these last few photos and some thoughts about our year.

What have we accomplished? We taught and learned and held nighttime homework sessions in the cool outdoors.




We hosted families for Parents Day on the first Saturday of each month.


We provided medical care, even when there was no electricity.

We played together, especially cricket and football.

We ate together.

We got to know and love our village neighbors.

We made many wonderful friends of all sizes.

And we learned to work together.

So now it's time to say goodbye. Vickie and I will go back to America and the kids will go home to their parents and grandparents to enjoy a holiday and prepare for another school year. It has been good. Perhaps we have done something useful. We hope so.

We love you, Rising Stars.

Vickie Bathes an Elephant

We visited Kerala's beautiful Malabar Coast for a few days. Kerala is the narrow strip on the west of the tip of India, next to Tamil Nadu, known for its scenic backwaters and mountainside tea plantations. We stopped by a mountain river and Vickie helped the elephant handlers give morning baths. She is using a chunk of coconut husk to scrub as the big animal lazily enjoys its morning pampering. You can hear me conversing with an English couple.

Beautiful Birds of South India

We live near a national bird sanctuary called Vedanthangel. January and February are the best months for viewing a wide variety of large water birds that winter in the area. Nesting residents of the sanctuary include the grey pelican, night heron, open bill stork, little cormorant, spoon bill, white ibis, and darter. We visited in the late afternoon and saw the birds come in to roost in the evening light. It was breathtaking.

The trees and bushes seemed to be growing right out of the water. Here a group of painted storks stay close to their nests.




These videos show painted storks in flight. I wish we had a better camera so you could see just how gorgeous they were in the late afternoon light.