This article was imported from our previous website, which many have broken some of the content. We apologize in advance for any strange formatting or broken links you may find.
This morning we woke to a beautiful sunrise over the hilltops. Every day here in the village of Ma Ho Jo our surroundings are proof of God’s holiness and a reminder of His supremacy. Yesterday our team, the ITDP staff and a few villagers finished all five cement rings and completed the cement roof to the water tank. Today we will be painting and stenciling the outside of the water tank. Kayla and Emily are creating the stencils that will be spray painted on the outside of the water tank, and the team is collectively deciding what will be written on display.
It is incredibly exciting and rewarding to see this project come to completion, and it is even more gratifying to know the hands that worked hard to make it are all one in Christ. It's been an honor to work with the villagers and staff of ITDP. The villagers have helped us with every single work project. The ITDP staff faithfully commits their lives to serving the villagers of the Northern Hill Tribe people.
Becky Mann arrived a day ago and is staying with our team in Ma Ho Jo. She has been sharing testimonies of just how Sacrificially Generous the ITDP staff is. We learned the children who stay in the Ma Ho Jo Hostel range from kindergarten to sixth grade age. Often the teachers have to guess what the children’s ages are because they do not have documentation or birth certificates.
The hostel children come from surrounding villages to stay in Ma Ho Jo to go to school and receive an education. They are supposed to return home to their native village on the weekends and during the summer break when school is closed. However, Becky Mann explains this seldom happens because of social economic reasons. In most cases the hostel children's families are too poor to feed them. The children or the parents are often caught in a drug addiction. Becky shared that right now she is trying to find someone in Ma Ho Jo who can take in two of three children, who are all related, during the summer break, because they have nowhere else to go.
A year ago the 15-year-old girl, 11-year-old boy, and 8-year-old boy went home for the summer and had to live on their own because their birth father had passed away, and when their birth mother remarried she was taken away to another village because her new husband did not want to take care of the children. The only other relatives these children have are their aunt and uncle, who are drug addicts and practice witchcraft. The oldest sister even returned to her native village as she was going to quit school and was arranging to be married so her siblings could have a home during school breaks.
Thankfully Becky and some ITDP staff went to her village and rescued her from being married, and returned her to Ma Ho Jo where she is getting ready to graduate on to seventh grade. The situations these children face are extremely difficult and can be dire both physically and spiritually. Praise be to God who is using the ITDP staff, teachers, and Mike and Becky Mann to be “A city set on a hill [that] cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Even in this dark place we are hearing testimonies of villagers who are coming to faith in Jesus Christ because they are witnessing God’s light that is shining through.