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December 2002 Update for
Regina Pacis     (changing lives since 1952)
Change A Life Program     (changing lives since 1998)
http://www.theworldnow.com/cal/
Don't just sit there, Change A Life!
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This update is sent to Sponsors and friends of the Change A Life Program. This update may be freely distributed if copied in its entirety. It cannot be printed for public distribution nor emailed commercially without permission.

December 12, 2002
This is to wish you and all our good benefactors a Very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace, Joy and Love in the Lord Jesus Christ who came to save us all. The children are getting their Christmas cards ready and we will be mailing them soon to the sponsors.
There are 100 children in the boarding now. This year we did not accept many new children because we are about to demolish the old building and reconstruct it. So the children will have to be squeezed into an adjacent annexe building and for about two years we are going to live in these straitened circumstances.
However though we made it a policy not to receive many new children in the educational boarding there were some we just could not turn away. So we had to take in Reshma and Praveen, two little girls from the street. Their mother lived in our boarding many years ago. Her name is Maya. Her parents were both blind, the father totally blind and the mother partially. Maya was only four years of age when we took her in. Her mother died soon after. The child studied with us up to the 5th grade then her father, in a fit of rage over some trifling misunderstanding, took the child away and ruined her life. He married her off to a poor Hindu man who died leaving her with two children. Then she married a Muslim who also died. She had three children by him. Now the girl is living on the pavement and trying to survive with her five children by begging. So I have taken in the three daughters, two into the educational boarding and one into the domestic housing.
The eldest daughter who is not quite normal mentally will work as a domestic worker and the two younger ones will stay in our boarding. I have managed to get admission for the two boys in a boarding for boys. But I told the mother that we will settle the entire children only if she consents to work at a decent job as a domestic and get off the streets. She helps her father sometimes in his work as a cane furniture repairer. I shall ask you to try to get sponsors for these little girls only when I am sure that they will indeed settle in and not try to run away. They seem eager to study and keep worrying me for books and they want to go to school but at the moment they cannot go to regular school as we are in the middle of the school year. We have got a volunteer, one of our ex-boarders, to teach them privately.
Another two little girls, Sana and Farzana, were also rescued off the pavement some six months ago and admitted to our boarding In Nasik. I sent them there because the parents are still on the pavement close to our house and it would not be a good influence for the children to have them so close. I did bring them to Bombay during the Diwali vacation so that the parents could visit them every day. They will come here again at Christmas for a few days. They have a small brother Asif. He is two years old but due to mal-nutrition he is constantly ill and is not able to sustain himself on his feet. When he is well he is a very lively child and seems to be intelligent. I feel terrible to see him there but the parents do not want to be separated from him and I can understand that. I long to get them off the street but the father is a drunkard and a gambler and I fear that any money I might get together for them will be wasted in his evil ways. I do so want to get them under a roof even if it is a hut in the slums. During the monsoon I persuaded them to go back to the village in Bihar and gave them the money for it. But as soon as the rains were over they came back to Bombay and this time brought the grandmother along, as they have nothing to eat in the village.
This year we have put a lot of emphasis on extra curricular activities for the children. One group has special singing lessons on Fridays for an hour and they have benefited not only in their singing skills but it has served as a real therapy for some children who were introverted and traumatized by certain family circumstances. The children thoroughly enjoy their singing and have learnt all the old English jingles and now they are learning Christmas carols which they will sing on their Christmas party day while they enact the Christmas story. Another group of older girls take swimming lessons at the YWCA swimming pool on Saturdays. Then there is a group learning musical instruments: the flute, the mouth organ, the guitar and the keyboard as well as the drums! The Girls of the Night school have earned a reputation as an excellent school band and have been invited on two occasions to play for the prestigious convents of Jesus and Mary on their sports day. Lastly Mrs. Maureen Lee and Mrs Belinda Broomfield are teaching a group of the older girls to dance to a Scottish tune and they will perform at the Christmas party.
On the 23rd we will have the annual Christmas party for the children of the boarding. They have games and a grand lunch. The lunch is usually donated my Mr. Michael, a gentleman who has a catering business. It is his birthday on the 23 so he likes to celebrate it by giving us all a grand lunch and he and his family join us for the lunch. On that day we will also have a group of Elderly ladies from the Home for the aged at Clare Road. Every year we invite them to join us at this celebration and how they do enjoy being with the children. We send a bus to bring them and take them back and they get Christmas presents too.
This year besides the usual contribution from the sponsors we have been privileged to receive many bags of glucose biscuits from Mrs. Preeti Ambani. She gave us 240 Kgs of biscuits to give the children at teatime. Mr. Dalip Kumar gave us a large donation to buy the children's mid-morning snacks. We have also redone the computer laboratory of the school, installing 12 new computers.with the help of individual donors.
God is so good to us and we thank him and pray continually for all those who cooperate with Divine Providence.
Once again, we wish you all, our good benefactors, a Very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace, Joy and Love!
Yours very affectly
Margaret Mary Fernandes r.m.i.