Visiting Mother Teresa's Orphanage in Delhi

A message to you from the sisters:

“Please kindly keep us in your prayers and pray that the message of Mother Teresa through the work we are doing, may shine forth in the world of today, that "God still loves the world through you and through me today; that the poorest of the poor, the unwanted, the lonely, the rejected and each one of us may know and experience how much God loves us personally.”

On our second day in Delhi we visited one of Mother Teresa’s handicap children’s homes run by the Sisters of Charity. These children are physically and mentally challenged.

The sisters are amazing; they work to bring out the children’s innate abilities and then assist to enhance them. Some children sing and are artistic and others sew. What ever their strength is, the sisters help them build on it in preparation for building a life.

When these kids are adults some of them will be helped to find jobs and the severely handicapped will move to another facility where they continue to receive loving care from the sisters.

One of the things we learned in our visit to the Sister’s of Charity in Delhi is that the children that are adopted from any of Mother Teresa’s orphan homes follow a very interesting set of standards. No child is able to be adopted after the age of seven or eight. Prospective parents are not allowed to pick the child; the sisters follow Mother Teresa’s guidelines.

The sisters look for a child that has the same or similar coloring and facial features as the new parents. They want to make sure the child looks like it is part of the family.

It was such a joy to be in the presence of these beautiful children in their clean and safe, unconditionally loving environment.

We donated ten thousand here and it felt so wonderful to support the whole organization. We also donated a huge carry bag of crayons; lots and lots of crayons. In fact, so many that the sisters will share them with six other homes in the area.

Days later on our journey, our local guide agreed to take our group’s offerings to a Mother Teresa Home in Agra. Tricia Waterford and her son brought a huge bag of baby clothing from home and some of the other journey participants had toys and gifts. At our last stop of the day, we all opened our suitcases and pulled out shirts and pants and anything we could do without, to be added to Tricia’s bag. It was a pretty funny sight. I wish I had taken a picture of it. The driver and his assistant pulled our luggage out of the bus and we all riffled through our bags in the parking lot. What a team!

If there are no adults at the Sister’s of Charity in Agra, the sisters will pass them on to other homes or to the local people in need.

One of the things we learned is that when we gift money the sisters are very grateful, because the money goes to Calcutta and then is distributed to all Mother Teresa’s homes throughout the world.

Mumbai Orphan Homes

We are at the end of our mission traveling throughout India now and have been excited to visit the Mother Teresa homes here in Mumbai over the next days. We went shopping to buy clothes with the rest of the donated money yesterday and again this morning.

We held the vision of our shopping for the children to be as the loaves and fishes and we got our wish. We got so much for the kids with the money collected; pants and shirts and little dresses and tons of baby clothing. We went into a spending frenzy at the open air shops.

The deals are beyond amazing. We were able to get boys pants and shirt sets for 250Rupees. That’s about $5.00. The little dresses were around 200Rupees. We spent all our Rupees and all the donation money to get the most wonderful clothing for the kids. We bought so much that Wendy Benkowski bought a bunch of sport’s bags to carry everything in….which made for a nice presentation to the sisters.

All the things we bought were instilled with the energy of unconditional love and made ready for your prayers and love to be infused.

When we arrived at the orphan home we found that there are currently 45 kids in residence, age 3 days to 8 years. When we delivered the bags and bags of clothes it was apparent that new items are rarely received. How sweet that the kids are going to have brand new things that no one else has worn before.

We were really excited to see the kids, so after our introduction meeting with Sister Salet she allowed us to enter the home. The place was spotless and smelled clean, as all of Mother Teresa’s homes are.

The babies were sleepy and in their beds getting ready for their nap, all except for a precious little one that insisted on coming on our tour. He was newly walking and held onto sister’s hand and skirts for balance.

The sisters all radiate love, love, love and the children soak it up!