Sarah's Covenant Homes - EMI project 8211

O LORD, the hope of Israel,

all who forsake you will be put to shame.

Those who turn away from you will be written in dust

because they have forsaken the LORD,

the spring of living water.

Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed;

save me and I will be saved,

for you are the one I praise.

Jeremiah 17:13-14 (NIV)

I've heard the passage above quoted many times, but for whatever reason, I don't remember ever seeing verse 13 included in the quote. However, I think it's a fitting passage to use when talking about my recent trip to Ongole [pronounced on-goal] (where Sarah's Covenant Homes is located).

Ongole (like much of India) is full of industrious, resourceful, likeable people - some living in better conditions than others. There are the guys who drive the autos, the guys who cook on the street corners, the guys who clean out sewers by hand, the ladies who cook, clean, and maintain their homes while also raising children, the chokidars who keep watch at night - not to mention lots of middle and upper class folks who have jobs just like those in the US. So often these Indians put me to shame with their work ethic, humility, and patience. Yet despite their physical and social fitness, so many of them are feeding on spiritual dust - trusting in rituals and images that can never truly nourish the core of who they are. Bowing down, offering sacrifices, reciting prayers ...to figurines made by men?

This disparity has broken my heart over and over since coming to India. Being a people-pleaser by nature, I want so badly to be able to tell people, "Oh yes, you can believe whatever you want. You worship Ganesh, I believe in Jesus, that other guy follows Allah - sure, no problem! As long as you are sincere and trying your best, that's all anyone can ask for." That's certainly the prevailing mindset in India. Hindu spirituality feels no need to worry about objective truth. It would be so much easier if I could endorse that mindset, not make waves, not question cultural norms, not care so much about strangers.

But unfortunately it's not like that. I am convinced that there is one true God (I know him!), and he has spoken clearly and objectively about himself. While God is loving, compassionate, patient, and faithful, he is also just and true, and he does not accept false/misdirected worship. He will not share his worship with anyone else. And he will hold people accountable for living lives that do not acknowledge him. If all of this is true, then it should profoundly influence my thoughts, words, and actions regarding the beautiful people of India.

So... how does this relate to Sarah's Covenant Homes (SCH)?

Excellent question! :)

The connection is this: while in Ongole, I saw representations of BOTH parts of the passage shown above. The first group of people (those who seem outwardly healthy but are spiritually wasting away) was vividly contrasted with another group of people - those who were painfully aware of their deformities and unhealthiness but were receiving a steady stream of nourishment and healing (both physical and spiritual): the children of Sarah's Covenant Homes. These precious kids are being fed not only with rice, vegetables, and meat, but also with the bread of life and the living water. No dusty hearts here.

A Deuteronomy 6:9 doorframe :)

Now, with that as the backdrop, let me take a break from metaphorical comparisons and actually tell you what we *did* on our trip. :)


Unfortunately (thankfully?), I don't have enough time or space to tell you everything we did throughout the week, but I did put together a photo album with a healthy serving of photos and captions to walk you through our activities/experiences for the week. I'd encourage you to check it out here to fill in the gaps of this post. (Note: if you've seen my Facebook photos, these are the same ones.)


Arriving and getting acquainted

After a 3-day journey that involved an excursion into the modern city of Hyderabad, an overnight stay in a really nice guest house, and a total of 34 hours on various trains, our EMI team finally arrived in the town of Ongole early Monday morning (Sept 17).

The train station in Ongole. The bubbly language on the left is Telugu - the local language.

Our client was Sarah's Covenant Homes (SCH), represented by the wonderful Eric and Tisra (an American couple who recently moved to India to help run/support the ministry). SCH is a children's home for disabled/developmentally challenged children, and it falls under the umbrella organization of India Christian Ministries (ICM). ICM is led/founded by a guy named James, who is married to Sarah, and Sarah started Sarah's Covenant Homes back in 2008. Hopefully that all makes sense. Unfortunately Sarah was out of the country traveling when we were there, but Eric & Tisra did a great job filling in for her.

Our task was to help prepare a site masterplan and conceptual building design for a new SCH facility. They wanted more/better space so they could serve their kids better and accomodate more kids in the future. They also wanted it to be their own property so they didn't have to worry about landlords kicking them out unexpectedly (apparently hosting disabled children is not popular among landlords in India due to Hindu beliefs such as karma and fate - many think that the kids should accept their lot in life and not receive help from anyone). :'(

Tour de Ongole
We were given a thorough tour of the current SCH facilities as well as a chance to meet some of the kids. They were precious. I know that's an overused word, but it's so true. Just look at them:

Evan.

Lily (?).

Rhoda (and me).

[photos by Christine Gerhart]

If you want to see more cute faces, go here.

Of course, we weren't there just to play with the kids - we needed to collect data about their current facilities so that we could do a good job of designing a new facility for them. So the architects measured the rooms and asked the workers what they thought about them (should they be bigger? smaller? arranged differently? etc), while we engineers went and looked at their water storage tanks (how much do they use each day?), wastewater system (how many toilets & showers do they have? where does the wastewater go? how is it treated? etc.), and other pertinent tidbits.

Checking out the water storage tanks at one of the current SCH facilities (it extended below ground). [photo by Christine Gerhart]

Later in the afternoon, we drove out to the site where they would like to build the new SCH compound in the future (and by compound, I mean a building(s) large enough to hold all of their children, up to 150 in the future). We walked the perimeter of the site, saw its existing features, and saw the corner where they wanted to put the SCH facility.

There is currently one structure on the 11-acre site - a multipurpose administrative building for ICM. Its floor plan is in the shape of a cross. :)

The rest of the site is covered with scrub/grass and mostly flat (except for one large pit, which we were walking past in this photo).

We rounded out the day with dinner at a nice Indian restaurant downtown (and no, not all the restaurants in India are Indian! haha). It was delicious!! :)

Getting to work
The day after we went on our various tours, we set to work generating our design. First the architects brainstormed the features and layout of the new building, while we engineers went out to the field to survey the land and make a map for the architects to work with. In addition to surveying, we also performed percolation tests (to measure how fast water drains into the soil [important for wastewater treatment/disposal]), soil tests (to see what type of soil was in the ground [important for structural loads and general knowledge]), and lots of calculations (water demand, wastewater projections, stormwater runoff, etc.).

Here I'm setting up the survey equipment (grey "Total Station" and yellow "data collector") while John (the new EMI CEO, in the green shirt) and James (the ICM director, in the beige shirt) look on. If you want to know more about the surveying, go read the captions on the photo album I mentioned above. ;)

It actually took a few days to make a complete map, but by the middle of the week we gave the architects had an accurate-enough map of the site boundary to begin laying out the building footprint.

(Note: I'm skipping over plenty of details here in the interest of time/space. Again, please view the photo album for more info.)

After much measuring, interviewing, deliberating, discussing, calculating, drawing, rendering, printing, and preparing, we finally had a conceptual design ready to present to our client. The last day of our trip (Sunday), we showed James, Eric, and Tisra the design we proposed, got their feedback, and then departed from Ongole in the morning. The professional volunteers (architect & civil engineer) flew back to the US, while we EMI interns & staff returned to New Delhi to finalize the design and report. (We also did an in-house design review with the entire EMI India staff once we got back, and that was extremely helpful too.)

The water/wastewater/stormwater part of the design, drawn in colored pencil on top of the proposed architectural layout (ground floor). I helped make this!! :) [Note: the design will be revised significantly based on the feedback we received, so this preliminary photo is just to give a flavor of what kind of work we were doing.]

Somehow the architects' drawings always end up looking prettier than the engineering plans... ;)

Our end-of-the-week design presentation in Eric & Tisra's apartment. (Eric is in red, Tisra in light blue, and James in dark blue.) The meeting went really well! :) [photo by Christine Gerhart]

Long story short: the trip went well despite having to make some adjustments along the way, and we have a really good start on the design for a future Sarah's Covenant Homes facility. Now that I'm back in the office, I've been working on tweaking the surveying drawings, writing our design report, and preparing for my next project trip (for a different children's home project in northern India) which starts in two days!

The SCH design will be revised significantly based on the feedback we've received (it's only a conceptual design, after all), so my work is nowhere near done, but it's still really encouraging to see all the progress we've made. It was also really encouraging to see the work that SCH is doing to bring living water to a dry and dusty land (to tie it back into the passage at the beginning of this post). Keep up the good work, SCH! :)

Learning more every day in India,

David

View of the sunset from the roof of our apartment the last night we were in Ongole.