Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year. Week Thirteen.

Dear All,

I hope you are still enjoying my blog, but I apologise for the lack of blogging over Christmas & New Year, I plan to come back with a vengeance in 2010, in fact probably next week. So something to let you think about, something that we witnessed on Boxing Day, something that shocked all three of us, mostly just the suddenness of the whole ordeal.

So as most of you may know we have a slum just 2 minutes around the corner, a slum that we work in called SD Puram. Well the day after Christmas Day, 347 families from the slum were evicted (including those who were participating in the music class, fun stations and screen printing at Kellys'), so in came the Police, firemen (they act as peacemakers) and JCBs that made short work of razing the slum to the ground. So now nearly all the families have been moved 35km away (including Shanthi our cook) to new government housing, where they'll have better living conditions, but extremely limited access to jobs, unless you travel back into central Chennai (just as Shanthi fortunately is, well fortunate for us). So each time we walk through the slum, there is less of it standing and within the next week or so the area we live in will take on a whole new personality, something we didn’t expect.

So after you’ve all (hopefully) had lovely Christmas’ in a comfortable warm home, with nice food, friends & family, some great presents and possibly a relaxing, peaceful time too, just think of those families living in our slum. These families have been sleeping rough in front of their destroyed home guarding their possessions, waiting to load all that they have (which is very little) into the back of a lorry, jump on the back of the lorry and head to an area they’ve never been too and with no other options, they are forced to make this area their new home.

A slightly sad end to what’s been a great year, but unfortunately the poor don’t have a voice, something that has to change as all of us are equal no matter how much money is in your bank account. Jesus didn’t come to this world to hang out with the doctors, lawyers, sportsmen and enjoy the high life, he came for everyone, no matter what race you are, language you speak, job you have. He spent most of his time with social outcasts, the people that nobody else cared about, the people who we so often walk past and ignore or we mutter something under our breath at them. So I pray that you would really think about what I’ve written about in this blog, I hope that you’d feel real compassion not only towards these families, but the many millions of people in this world that are homeless or without the basic needs to survive.

Thanks and God Bless,

Tom xx