Greetings from New Zealand nice, cold, rainy weather in total contrast to nice hot, spicy India. Well it was a bit more than two weeks since the yellow team arrived at the Orphanage in India and what a blessing we had there. After arriving we evaluated the place and saw where we would be of greatest help to the orphanage during our stay. So we decided to help clean the three storerooms. What we thought would be a quick one week job turned out to be mission impossible.
Our first day as we started to clean the storeroom we spent most of the time catching and killing rats! Can't remember the exact head count of the rats we caught but it was round about 50 food stealing pests. We had some of the best trained and skilled "Rat Killer Kids" who did the job and boy oh boy when the kid's food is at stake they can get quite angry.
After thinking we had got every rat, on day two of our storeroom cleaning expedition we were quite surprised when we opened the storeroom door and just saw those four legged scoundrels run for their lives. However it was to no avail because in seconds we had the "Rat Killers" hard at work and it was "R.I.P" for the good- for- nothing pests. Anyway just when we thought that we had all the scary creatures in the storeroom we started to sort through some mountains of clothes. All of a sudden all the kids ran out the storeroom screaming! What could it be have they found the Queen ratty rat? As I approached the scene what I saw was a nice big Black Cobra lying amongst all the clothes. For sensitive readers I will skip the thrill of the story of the Cobra and conclude it by saying the Cobra will never be able to dance anymore to the tuneful sound of the flute.
Well daily we persevered and worked at detoxifying the storerooms. To try and explain the state of the storerooms is
virtually impossible. What I can describe is that all three storerooms were filled to capacity and without removing some of the stuff outside we would not be able to enter the storeroom. After removing huge amounts of junk in the storeroom and sorting through clothes, blankets, craft equipment, toys, rice and rice and did I mention rice, eventually we had completed "mission possible".
During our time cleaning we had great fun with the children, even a literal mind-blowing pillow fight! Now that "Operation-Storeroom Detoxification" is complete I have seen how in our own lives we need to do the exact same thing. Sometimes we got to take the time to get all the rats and junk out of our lives before it starts breeding and building up so that no one can get into it. Just like the storerooms that keep getting good stuff to store if it is not used the rats will either eat it or before long it's expired and turned to junk. We need to do the exact same when
we blessed we need to give and give and give it away, not store it up so that it can get trashed in the end.
So keep giving...