AN UNFORGETTABLE LESSON IN GRATITUDE

An Unforgettable Lesson in Gratitude

By Becky Douglas · November 7, 2017

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Becky Douglas is the founder and president of Rising Star Outreach, an organization dedicated to helping those in the leprosy colonies in India. To find out how you can help, click here. 

Two little boys were ushered by their mother into the smoke-filled room where we were waiting. She had just brought them from a leprosy colony. Stick thin and shy, they clung to her saree. The cramped, dark space was home to 25 children, all of whom were “untouchables” for one reason or another. Some were handicapped, some orphans, some were from leprosy colonies. One girl, Devi, was afflicted with progeria, the disease that makes you age rapidly; though only 13 years old, she looked as if she were in her thirties. Several of the children were unable to walk due to either birth deformities or polio.

Cooking was done inside the home over an open fire, and thus the smoke clogged the air and hung between us. I tried to approach the older of the two: Daniel. His mother told us that he had suffered from leprosy but had been cured. His arm was wrapped protectively around his younger brother, David. Trying to break the barrier and engage them, I reached into my purse and brought out two new children’s toothbrushes. I squatted down, so that I could look into their eyes and held the toothbrushes out to them with a smile.

At first neither moved. But finally, curiosity got the better of them and Daniel reached gingerly for the toothbrushes. They had never seen such a thing. I pulled another from my purse and showed them how to brush their teeth. They were fascinated.

The mother was destitute, and was in hiding from the boys’ father who was terribly abusive to both her and the boys. Fearing for their lives, she had fled with only the clothes on their backs. She didn’t want her children to have to beg in order to survive so she brought them to this home. She lingered over dinner with her two beloved boys, then kissed them both tenderly and slipped out the door. They found a little space between other sleeping children at bedtime. 25 children were sleeping in a room about seven feet by eight feet. With arms still wrapped around each other they fell to sleep with exhaustion.

The man running this home had promised the mother that he would send the boys to school, and for the first year things went well.   But over time we became more and more concerned about the way children were being treated in this home. There were also many financial inconsistencies and with the unwillingness of the director to make changes, we were forced to end our association with him.

Before long David and Daniel found themselves kept out of school to help this man construct a new home. They forcibly labored long hours in the heat of Southern India. They lived on only rice and water. The two skinny boys got skinnier.

The next time I saw the boys I had learned about what was happening in this home and came to rescue the boys. There was a scene. The man running the home angrily told me he would never agree to send them to the new children’s school we had started. After threatening me, I left—without the boys.

A young mother in Arizona, Lynn Allred, had seen a picture of these two boys at a fireside I gave. Lynne told me that she was convinced that she was to help with these two boys. We all began to pray that the man running the original home would have his heart softened. A long time passed.

On a subsequent trip to India I was pleasantly surprised to enter the Rising Star Children’s Home and see Kala, the boys’ mother. She had come to work for Rising Star as a housemother. She told us that the man running the original home would not allow her boys to leave and even threatened to charge the mother with abandonment of the boys if she tried to remove them.

We all redoubled our prayers for the boys. Then wonder of wonders, on my next trip to India I was stunned to see both David and Daniel at Rising Star Outreach. They were even thinner than I had remembered them. They had been so starved that Daniel, although fourteen, still had not had his voice change.   His body had not received enough nutrition to go through puberty and he still had the high-pitched voice of a small Indian child.

They were much older than our other children who were all pre-schoolers, but they were beloved by all the children. They acted almost as surrogate parents; they calmed crying children, played with all the kids and helped with schoolwork.

During all this time, Lynn had worked tirelessly to find a way to bring the two boys to America. At that time if they came on a student visa they had to attend a private school, as the State Department wasn’t willing to allow US taxpayers to foot the bill for their education. Miraculously, she was finally able to find a private school that was willing to accept them even though they were years behind in their studies and didn’t speak English. The school was a Christian school and required that the boys record their testimony of Jesus as part of their admission requirements.

On my next trip to India I excitedly told the boys about this remarkable opportunity. We were required to contact the father, who not only refused to cooperate, but threatened to kill them if they left India. He would relent only if the mother returned to live with him. Again, through the mercies of prayer, the father finally relented and agreed to let the boys go.

My dear friend Sharon Thompson was with me on this trip. We both grabbed an interpreter and sat down with the two boys to record their testimonies of Jesus. I listened while Daniel told his feelings about Jesus. I was surprised to learn that Kala was actually a member of the Church. She had not been allowed to attend Church by her husband, but she had carefully taught the boys about their loving Savior. Daniel’s testimony was simple and incredibly sweet. I had the interpreter read his testimony back to him and then asked, “Is this everything you’d like to say?” Daniel paused only for a moment before adding earnestly, “Please add that of all the boys in the world I feel that I am the most blessed.”

I could hardly believe my ears and tears involuntarily stung my eyes. This boy who owned only the clothes on his back, and had been afflicted with one of the most dreaded diseases in the world—and thus branded as untouchable; who had been forced to run from a violent father and been given to a cruel man to raise, who had been forced to work in the hot sun as an unpaid laborer instead of attending school, who had been separated from his loving mother, who had recently had his father threaten to kill him, and who had endured all kinds of unspeakable privation—still had his heart overflowing with gratitude. I thought wryly, “Well, with all that I’ve been blessed with, I must be the most ungrateful woman in the world!!”

All this time I thought I was going to help Daniel. In reality, I wasn’t lifting him as much as he was inspiring me! That night he taught me in an unforgettable way that gratitude has nothing to do with what we have, and absolutely everything to do with our hearts and our humility. Since that night, when I am feeling beset with problems and challenges that seem overwhelming and I find myself tempted to whine, I remember the skinny young boy, filled with gratitude who taught me to be thankful in all circumstances.

Note: The boys did come to study in America. They not only learned English but graduated from High School here. They went on to LDSBC and have both graduated from there. Daniel is now studying Hospitality at BYUH and David is studying business at BYU. Daniel is married to a wonderful young lady and they are the proud parents of a charmingly beautiful little girl, Saroja Rose.

UNDERSTANDING THE WORTH OF A CHILD

Understanding the Worth of a Child

By Becky Douglas · January 7, 2018

To find out how you can help with the work at Rising Star Outreach, click here. 

It was only a pre-school, but we were unbelievably excited to actually be opening a school for the leprosy-affected in Southern India. We would start with a preschool—children only 3-5 years old. I knew that the leprosy colonies were spread miles and miles apart which meant that the children would have to stay overnight at the school. A boarding school for preschoolers—I had never heard of such a thing and wondered if parents would really be willing to leave their 3-5-year-old children there for months on end.

The small house we rented had a tiny bedroom for a headmaster and one other small bedroom. On the floor, if we put a mat that extended from wall to wall, we figured we could squeeze 27 children onto the mat, if they slept shoulder to shoulder. But would there be 27 toddlers whose families were willing to have them live away from home? I wasn’t sure. . .

The morning that we opened up registration we were completely unprepared for the onslaught of families and children wanting to enroll in the school. By noon, the places were all filled and already there were one hundred children on the waiting list.

There is apparently a grapevine amongst the beggars on the street. Somehow word had gotten out that somewhere in India a pre-school was opening that would admit children from the leprosy colonies. The response was unexpected and overwhelming.

The families and children continued to come. By the time we shut down registration that evening there were more than 200 children on the waiting list. The next day it began all over, but this day they began to arrive from all over India: Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore. Over the next few days they continued to pour in, with one man and his son even coming from New Delhi, which is clear across the country. By now we had quit numbering the waiting list.

Two days later I happened to be in a leprosy colony with our medical clinic. I was surprised to see a young five-year-old child sitting in the dirt crying forlornly. The people in the colony just seemed to walk past him as if he were not there. When I asked the Colony leader what was happening, he told me it was a very sad story. He said, “The boys’ father brought him from New Delhi to try to put him in the Rising Star Outreach pre-school but there was no room for him. The father didn’t have enough money to get his son home on the train to New Delhi, so he brought him here and asked us to look after him. The father has gone back to Delhi to beg and try to get enough money to come get his son.” The leader shook his head sadly and continued, “The problem is that we don’t have enough room or food for our even own children. No one is willing to take him. He’s just been sitting in the dirt crying for the last two days.”

I was aghast! A little kindergartener sitting abandoned in the dirt for two days—nothing to eat and no roof over his head, but people passing him by as if he didn’t exist? I ran to him and gathered him up in my arms. I knew there was no room for one more child on our sleeping mat, and also that there were hundreds of children ahead of him on the waiting list. But I also knew that I could not leave him in the dirt to die. “Don’t worry, we’ll find room for him at Rising Star,”I heard myself saying.

I brought little Arun back to the hostel. For the next two days, he never stopped crying. I held him in my arms while I rushed around trying to get things ready for the school to start.   There were so many things to do! The children all had to be screened for leprosy. They had shown up with ringworm, scabies, lice, parasites—even hoof and mouth disease. But the worst was the scabies. The patches on the skin had to be scraped until the skin was rubbed off and the eggs exposed. It was painful and very traumatic for the children. When we’d say, “Ooh dear, I think this is scabies,” the children would immediately begin to plead pitifully, “No, no Auntie. Not scabies! Not scabies!” But there was no choice other than to treat all these things. With the children sleeping shoulder to shoulder, the chance of one infection being passed to the entire group was inevitable unless every case was treated.

Anytime I put Arun down for even a second he wailed and sobbed uncontrollably. The trauma of his perceived abandonment by his father had shaken him to the core. I was beginning to wonder if he was going to make it or not. Then, inexplicably on the third day he began to settle down a bit. He still spent most of his waking time on my lap, but as the week wore on, he gradually began to engage with the other children.

During the next few years, Parents’ Day was the hardest time for Arun. We had designated one Saturday each month as Parent’s Day. The parents would come from miles away to visit their children. They would come bearing sweet gifts of food (often spoiled from the heat of the journey) and inexpensive plastic toys or beads. This was a time of happy reunions, with lots of hugging and smiles.

Arun’s parents were obviously unable to travel across India for Parents’ Day. Feeling terribly left out, Arun would hide in the hostel and silently cry, and not emerge until all the parents had left that evening. Once we realized what was happening, we gave him the responsibility of being in charge of the lunch and getting everyone organized to be fed. This seemed to make him feel more a part of things, but truthfully my heart still ached for him when I’d see him on Parent’s Day, wistfully watching the other children with their parents.

Fast forward to this past April. I happened to be in India for the end-of-the-school-year Awards Ceremony. I was so thrilled to see that Arun received three awards for the twelfth grade: the best academic performer, the best sportsman, and the leadership award. My, how he had grown and changed! He was now confident and stood tall and erect. He was visibly proud as he walked forward to the stage three times to be honored. And I was so proud I could hardly stand it!!

He has accomplished so much! He will go on to college and I’m sure he will excel there as well. He has been taught that he is a child of God with inherent talents and abilities. He has much to offer the world! He has learned to dream and has worked hard to achieve his dreams. What a huge change from the little boy abandoned in the dirt with no hope!

These are the days that I say to myself, “In spite of all the challenges, there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing!”

It’s so easy for us to look at a little dirty beggar child and think that they are useless. We write them off mentally as worthless. But they are each one, the bearer of unique and wonderful gifts that only need opportunity to be developed. The same is true of the homeless, the drug addicts, the prostitutes.

I have a friend whose two sons work with people such as these in Las Vegas. They canvas the streets searching for the down and out, the discouraged, the hopeless. Convinced that every person has unfathomable divine potential, they patiently work with them, until the person begins to believe that they have inestimable eternal worth and unlimited potential. The transformation can take months, even years, but each one reclaimed is a beloved lost sheep of God’s.

When we see people who have been bruised by life and seem to have fallen, let’s reserve judgment. Instead, let us offer a hand of love and of fellowship; a hand of hope. Who’s got time to judge? There’s too much work to be done!

Note: In spite of the separation and great distance, Arun’s family is still connected to him. They have stayed in touch as much as possible and have even visited the campus a couple of times as their circumstances have allowed.

CREATING TRUE HEALING

Creating True Healing

By Becky Douglas · February 1, 2018

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To learn how you can help with the efforts of Rising Star Outreach, click here. 

In this series of articles, I have tried to teach through stories, principles that we have learned through our work at Rising Star Outreach. Why? Because, in the end, not everyone can go to India to serve the poor. But the principles that work in India to create healing, can also heal if put into practice anywhere in the world.

In this vein, it is interesting to look back at the genesis of how we have addressed physical wounds in our work with the leprosy-affected. On my first trip to India, I was overwhelmed at the physical suffering of the leprosy-affected beggars petitioning us for money when our car stopped at traffic lights. They had rotting hands and feet, misshapen faces, open, gaping wounds, and even maggots in some of their wounds. It was this suffering that drove me upon my return home to create Rising Star Outreach, a charity to help these poor, neglected people. But, how to heal?

We initially raised enough money to hire a doctor, but imagine our surprise to learn that it was impossible to find a doctor in India willing to treat a person with leprosy! None were willing to touch these people, because those with leprosy were considered Dalits, or Untouchables. If a doctor were to touch one of these patients, it was believed that the doctor, himself, would become defiled. Then he would be unfit to treat other patients.

Having no medical training, I felt helpless to do anything. Then one day I happened to see a man cleaning out a wound with his pocketknife. When the wound was cleaned out, he filled the resulting hole with salt crystals, apparently to keep infection down. Then he wrapped the wound in a bandage. A little voice in my head was saying, You could do that! And so, on my next trip to India I brought my pocketknife. I literally dug out the rotting, infected flesh in the wounds! I have to admit, the first time was hard, but the patient was so grateful for this little bit of help, that soon all of our volunteers were doing the same. We worked in the dirt, with no anesthesia—it was truly a nearly archaic way of treating the wounds.

Some time after this, we were finally able to find a doctor to run our medical program. Hallelujah! We started a mobile medical clinic that could travel to seven different leprosy colonies each week and treat the wounds. Finally, the patients were able to receive real help! But then an interesting problem emerged. I noticed as I would make trips to India that the wounds didn’t seem to be healing much. Months after receiving weekly treatments, the wounds seemed to look the same.

When I asked our doctor about this he shook his head and said with some discouragement and exasperation, “I’m doing all I know to do, but the patients never do anything I tell them. Every week when I come, they’ve done nothing to care for their wounds and it seems we’re starting all over again.”

I mentioned this problem to Padma, our partner in India. Padma listened patiently.   Before responding, I could tell she was weighing how directly she ought to speak. After a pause, she looked straight at me and said evenly, “You Americans! You come to India, wanting to help. But you just give things to people. I’m sure it makes you feel good to think you’re helping, but there is a truth you’re missing here. Nothing given free has any value. Besides, every time you give something to a person, you diminish that person.”

This struck me like a ton of bricks. I had worked so hard to be able to give to these needy people. Now, here was Padma telling me that I was diminishing them with each gift. The thought practically knocked me back on my feet.

But, how then? If I couldn’t give medical treatment to people, how could we find a way to heal them? To Padma, the solution was not difficult. We simply needed to make each patient responsible for their own well-being. To do that, we needed to charge each patient, even the smallest amount of money so that they would be personally vested in their care. I recoiled at that thought—how was it even possible—let alone moral—to charge people who had no money even for sufficient rice to live?

But Padma was insistent. She said that even if we charged them two rupees each time they came, it would give them the sense of being involved in their care. Two rupees is the equivalent of three cents. I was dubious. It made me feel like a mercenary. Besides, what difference could three cents make?

Seeing how uncomfortable I was with this, Padma said if it made me feel better we could give the collected funds to one of the Women’s Self-help Groups to fund more micro-businesses. Our doctor went out and bought a plastic bank resembling Buddha. Reluctantly, I instructed our doctor not to give any more medical treatments to patients unless they paid 3 cents when they came for treatment. The money was to go in the Buddha bank. He added that he would also charge them 16 cents to set up a chart. They would have to bring their medical chart with them each time, or he would not give treatment. If they lost their chart, they would have to pay 16 cents to set up another one. By now I was really squirming.

But Padma confirmed the wisdom in this plan. With both Padma and Dr. Krishnakanth looking at me, I finally caved and said meekly, “Well, as long as it all goes into the Buddha bank and we can give the bank to Women’s Self-Help Groups when it gets filled . . .” And so, the new plan was put into effect.

The most amazing thing happened. The wounds began to heal! The patients, it seemed, were suddenly doing everything the doctor told them to do. Being invested in their medical care, gave the care more value to them. That was like a light going off in my head! I began to look at everything we were doing and holding it to this measure: nothing given free has any value.

After some time, we noticed that there were a number of patients who, even though they were following the doctor’s instructions, still had wounds that refused to heal. At this point we had a wonderful American doctor, Karl Kirby, who had come to work with us for a year, alongside our Indian doctor. When I questioned Dr. Kirby why some of these wounds weren’t healing he explained to me that some patients had diabetes and therefore had real issues with healing. He suggested that our once-a-week treatments were not sufficient. These patients needed to clean their own wounds every single day, and apply clean bandages. Even more difficult, they needed to cut off their own necrotic tissue each day to that the wounds could close.

Since we couldn’t possibly visit seven colonies every day the only alternative was to teach the patients to clean their own wounds. We created wound self-care kits. Dr. Kirby gave lots of training to the patients. The results were staggering!! Wounds that had stuck around for three years were suddenly healing after a few weeks. Once again, it was brought home to me in a graphic fashion how important it was to give people the responsibility for their own healing.

Poongathai is a great example of this principle. She suffered for years with ulcers in her feet that would make even the most hardened volunteer wince. She struggled to walk. Nothing she did seemed to make any difference. The wounds continued to grow until they had reached the grotesque stage. Even weekly visits from the doctor weren’t stopping the spread of the destruction in her feet.

When Poongathai came to the first wound-self-care group she was skeptical. Why would a program that she would do herself, work, when all other programs had failed? But she decided to try. Unbelievably, almost daily she began to see visible signs of healing. In a little over four weeks, her festering wounds were nearly healed up. She was incredulous! The best thing of all was her proud, radiant smile as she took off her bandages to show the doctor that her own treatment had been more effective than his!

The great thing about a principle, unlike a practice, is that it can be applicable in all occasions. The principle here is a simple one: empowering people to solve their own problems is always more effective than trying to solve their problems for them. It not only works on physical wounds, but it works on social, emotional and spiritual wounds as well. It works in families. It works in communities. It works in nations.

The exciting thing to me is that as we look at seemingly intractable problems in our lives, by applying this principle, we can find simple answers that work. Answers that truly lift, heal, empower and ennoble.

NO ACT OF LOVE IS EVER WASTED

No Act of Love is Ever Wasted

By Becky Douglas · March 11, 2018

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To find out how you can help with the efforts of Rising Star Outreach, click here. 

When my son Alex was fourteen, he traveled to India to spend his summer volunteering at Rising Star Outreach. This was in the very beginning of our service in India, before we had opened our own charity. At that point, we were supporting a toddler home named the Sangitha Home. It was quite a challenge –a home with ninety three-to-five-year olds!

The woman who ran this charity, Grace Moses, had chosen to concentrate on these ages because they had the most needs. The young babies were easily adopted to foreigners. The children older than five could go to school each day and so required less care. But very few people were serving the toddlers, because they required constant attention.

In those days it was very common to see children in very desperate straits on the streets of Chennai. One day, Gopi, our director, picked up a little girl about the age of two who looked as if she were dying. She was too weak to respond to him. Gopi somehow determined that her name was Rani. Gopi brought little Rani back to the Sangitha Toddler Home.

Rani was so emaciated from starvation that she threw up the rice that Gopi tried to feed her. He tried giving her bread, and again she vomited it back up. She had been without food for so long that her digestive system had shut down. Finally, my son, Alex suggested that they try giving her just the rice water—the water left over from boiling the rice. Alex had a medicine dropper in his suitcase which he ran to get. Holding her tenderly on his lap, Alex tried giving her just one drop of rice water at a time. It stayed down! He continued to feed her this way until the bowl of rice water was gone. Alex did this for a couple of days until finally Rani’s tummy reached a point where it could accept food.

Rani had apparently been pretty abused on the streets because she refused to let anyone come near her. She had taken a liking to Alex because he had so gently brought her back from the brink of death. So every day when Alex came to the children’s home Rani would toddle up to him and sit in his lap. He held her the whole time he was there. He would sing to her, talk to her, stroke her hair, try to play games with her. If anyone else came up to her, she would cringe and hide her head in Alex’s arms.

Those two little souls bonded so strongly! Every email home, Alex talked about Rani; today Rani smiled! Today Rani laughed! Today Rani let another child come up to join us! By the end of the summer they had become close friends.

Shortly after Alex arrived back home, one afternoon he was sitting at the kitchen table working on his homework when the phone rang. It was Gopi from India. Gopi was crying and seemed inconsolable, “Becky, our hearts are breaking in India today.” He went on to say that Rani apparently had a mother, because a woman had come to the home, announced that she was Rani’s mother and wanted to take her. She said that she had made a promise to her (Hindu) God that she would find her daughter and care for her. They tried to convince the mother to let Rani stay until she was completely healthy. They showed the mother how much progress Rani had made. But the mother was insistent. Gopi said sadly, “So she took Rani away.” He sounded heart-broken.

When I hung up the phone, Alex looked at me expectantly. He had been able to gather enough from my side of the conversation to realize the call was about Rani. “What is it, mom? What is it about Rani?” he asked anxiously. I explained as gently as I could.

Alex was terribly upset, “Mom, you have to get her back! She will die in that woman’s care! You had to see Rani when she came in. She was nearly dead.” I responded, “There are laws in India, Alex. I’m sorry, but I can’t keep a child from a mother who wants her.” Alex couldn’t believe it, “You mean, you’re just going to let her die?”  

“My hands are tied, Alex. There’s nothing that I can do.”   Alex had begun to cry. He was hurt and angry. He said, “Fine! I guess I just wasted my summer in India. All I did was care for Rani and now you’re going to let her die.” I could feel his pain and wished that I could help. I sent up a silent prayer for guidance. Into my mind came a story about Mother Teresa that I had read in a magazine, years before.

The story was about a woman in London who was a great fan of Mother Teresa’s. I’ll call her Ann. Ann had saved her money so that she could go to India and work with Mother Teresa but when she got to the Home for The Dyingin Calcutta, Mother Teresa wasn’t there. ‘Where is she?” Ann asked the nuns. The nuns told Ann that Mother Teresa was over at the infant center. They gave Ann directions in how to get there, and Ann scurried over there. She had waited so long to meet this woman!

Spotting the home, Ann stepped quickly inside and scanned the room for Mother Teresa. She was stunned at the sight that greeted her. There were hundreds of babies on the floor, many of them crying. There were six Missionaries of Mercy in the room, doing what they could to meet the needs of all these babies.

Mother Teresa was at the back of the room. As she came towards the door, she would stop and point to a baby and say to the missionaries, “This baby right here,” or pointing to another baby, “this little baby right here.” As she did that, one of the missionaries would quickly come up, pick up the baby and take it to a rocking chair. There were half a dozen rocking chairs against the wall. The missionary would then begin to rock the baby and sing to it.

As Mother Teresa came to Ann, she herself, picked up a baby and handing it gently to Ann, said in almost a whisper “And this baby is for you.” Surprised, Ann accepted the baby as it was offered to her. It was a frail little baby boy. By the time she looked up, Mother Teresa was gone.

A bit disconcerted, Ann asked the workers what she was supposed to do with this baby? One motioned for her to come and sit in a rocking chair. When Ann sat down, in broken English the worker said, “Mother Teresa has a very strong belief that no child should ever leave this earth without having felt the warmth of an embrace and human love. As you can see, there are more than 200 babies here. There are only six of us. There’s no way we can love on each child. It’s physically impossible”.

Reverently, she continued, “But Mother Teresa has a gift. She comes every morning. She somehow knows which babies will die today. She points them out to us. Our job is to love on these babies until they die, so that they can leave this world in love. You need to rock that little boy, embrace him and share your love with him.”

A bit bewildered, Ann began to rock the baby. She hummed the Brahms lullaby. She said she could never forget, how as weak as the child was, how he still pressed his little face into her neck in response to her touch. She rocked the baby until he died that afternoon in her arms. Her life was transformed by this experience.

She wrote, “I have friends who would tell me that I wasted that day because the baby died anyway. But I would tell you that this was the holiest day of my life. I learned this day that no act of love is ever wasted.” Ann said that this was a turning point in her life.

As I finished recounting this story, I said to Alex, “I believe also, Alex, that no act of love is ever wasted. Yes, Rani may die, heaven forbid. But she spent several months in our home where she was loved and cherished. It may be all that she takes from this life with her. Your time was not wasted.”

We have not seen Rani since that day. To this day I still subconsciously look for her whenever I’m on the streets of Chennai. I am fervently hoping and praying that the mother stayed true to her word and took Rani home to care for her.

We have been incredibly blessed by God at Rising Star to have now seen hundreds of little lives change for the better through our schools and children’s homes. But we are not always successful with every child. We had two children die last year. One young girl fell into a river that was swollen from a cyclone that was off shore.

She had gone home from our school for the summer holiday and had gone down to the river to bathe. She was swept away by the swollen river. Another child caught Spinal Meningitis and died in the hospital. These events would be unbearable if I couldn’t remember the wise words of Ann, when she said that she had learned that no act of love is ever wasted. Those two girls had been cherished and loved by so many at Rising Star Outreach.

We cannot control how much life a person is granted. But we can control how much love we share with that person. In the end, I believe that the shared love is the thing that endures beyond this life. I have had to bury both a beautiful daughter and a precious granddaughter. Both deaths would have been unbearable if I could not be comforted in knowing that many days and years of love were shared together and that they will be shared again. Because of our Savior and His marvelous atonement, love is eternal. Each act of love that we share with another becomes an eternal legacy of our lives.

ANGELS IN OUR MIDST

Angels in our Midst

By Becky Douglas · May 1, 2018

Becky Douglas is the founder of  Rising Star Outreach whose mission is to lift those with leprosy. See their website at risingstaroutreach.org 

Four short video clips, shot over a period of seventeen years tell a haunting story of one woman’s’ courageous struggle against a debilitating disease and of the loving people around her who made her suffering tolerable.

First clip: I first met Saral in 2001 in a destitute leprosy colony. None of the patients in this colony had any access to medical care. They were desperately poor and had multiple medical needs. Saral had a terrible ulcer in her foot.   Without treatment it had festered, with the infection eating deeply into her foot.

Instead of digging out this wound myself– using my handheld video camcorder, I recorded Paul, another volunteer, doing the procedure. Saral had her foot propped up to make it more accessible. She had asked her 13-year old grandson to hold her foot so that she wouldn’t pull her foot away when the treatment became painful, which happened when the person digging out the wound reached proud flesh. This was a very basic setup and we unfortunately were working in the dirt without either anesthesia or sterile facilities.

Saral was very bonded to her grandson, whom she had raised when his mother died. He had lost his mother when he was only 13 days old. His father had already succumbed to leprosy by the time he was born. Saral was the only mother he had known. He was clearly devoted to her. Once the volunteer hit proud flesh the procedure became very painful. Saral grimaced and grit her teeth. She shook her head back and forth in pain as tears ran down her face. With the encouragement of her grandson she was able to endure.

But as the procedure dragged on the volunteer somberly announced that the infection had reached the bone and that the foot would need to come off. The camera captures the agony in Saral’s face as she receives the news. Saral knows that when her foot is amputated she will not be able to go out begging in the nearby community. Without money, not only is her life at risk but she worries about what will happen to her grandson. Tears flowing freely, she collapses against her grandson who tries to console her.

It’s impossible to watch this video clip without tearing up, as Saral’s pain is so visceral, contrasted to her grandson’s love and devotion, which is deeply touching.

The second video clip comes as a surprising happy conclusion to this first miserable scene. In the second clip, Rising Star Outreach has now been working in Saral’s village for a couple of years. Doctors were able to treat the wound instead of amputating the foot. It is healing up and Saral’s joy is boundless. She dances around, bubbling with enthusiasm as she describes to me how successful her “business” has become. Through a loan, we had arranged for Saral to own a milk cow. We brought it in artificially inseminated. The cow produced a male calf, which she promptly named “Becky Douglas”, in appreciation of this opportunity. She was now a woman of importance, owning a cow that produced milk. She tended to the cow like a tender parent. Her devotion paid off! By selling the milk, Saral now had been able to improve her home. Her home now had simple furniture, where before her hut had been completely empty. She had remarkably even managed to buy a TV for her grandson to watch. She proudly announced to us that she had $200 dollars in the bank, which she was saving to educate her grandson. It was a stunning sea change from the first video.

The third clip is about twelve years later. Saral has had a pleasant and meaningful existence. Her grandson, now grown into a handsome young man, has married another girl in the leprosy colony and is the proud father of a baby boy. This video was shot after I had not visited her colony for a period of three years while I served with my husband, who was called to preside over the Santiago, Dominican Republic mission. I was so eager to return to my friends in the leprosy colonies of India after my mission ended. When I reached Saral’s colony I could hardly wait to see her. When she came out of her home and saw me, she burst into tears. Talking a million miles an hour, she reproaches me for not visiting for three years. “How could I abandon them for so long?” she demands to know. I tried to explain about mission calls and how I had been on an island across the world and it wasn’t possible for me to visit. Saral is speaking in Tamil, but her tone is unmistakable. She repeats the word “Ama” over and over again. Ama is the Tamil word for “mother”. She fiercely scolds me telling me, “You are our mother. Mothers cannot abandon their children! For many days we have not known what happened to you and we have missed you dearly. We have prayed with much faith for your return. Don’t you ever leave us like that again!” 

 The fourth video clip is heart wrenching. I had been informed by Dr. Susan, our doctor, that Saral was very ill and possibly dying of a stomach infection. Dr. Susan told me that Saral desperately needed to get to a hospital and get on IV antibiotics if she were to have any chance of surviving. Dr. Susan said that her family had refused to let her go. Dr. Susan was hoping I could convince them otherwise. I dreaded seeing my dear friend in a desperate condition again. She was now over 80 years old. I prayed that God would give me the wisdom to know how to convince her family to let her go to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the colony, I immediately rushed to find her home. But someone had run in front of me, loudly announcing to Saral that “Becky is in the colony”. Before I even turned down her street I could hear her calling pitifully, “Ama! Ama!” Her “daughter-in-law”, Jennifer—the lovely girl who had married her grandson, was struggling to carry Saral’s emaciated body out of the hut so she could talk to me. I was shocked at Saral’s appearance. She looked like she had shrunk down to 60 pounds. I ran to hug her. It was like hugging a skeleton. “What on earth has happened to Saral?” I asked Jennifer. Jennifer sadly informed me that Saral could no longer eat. She had been ten days without food! Jennifer had tried feeding her a little rice water with some powder mixed into it but Saral was unable to drink it. Together, Jennifer and I tried to coax some of this drink down Saral’s throat. But after ten days of not eating, Saral’s digestive system had shut down. The pain of trying to get the rice water down her throat was not worth the little nourishment it provided.

I hugged Saral and held her tightly to me as she wept, recounting to me her suffering. I asked Jennifer why she had not allowed them to take Saral to the hospital. Jennifer choked up as she struggled to speak. Unable to talk, she pointed to a lump underneath a blanket in the door of the house.   “What??!!” Lifting up the blanket, I was stunned to see her Jennifer’s father. Also, over 80 years old, he had stumbled and fallen into a fire and been terribly burned. He was now burning up with fever and chills. What was he doing under a heavy blanket in 94-degree weather? The heart was stifling to the rest of us. How could he stay under a heavy blanket? It was a pitiful desperate try to stop his chills. I had some men come help Jennifer to uncover him and bring him out into the open. His face was drawn up in agony. He was clearly dehydrated, in addition to the third degree burns over his arms and legs.

Now it all made perfect sense to me. Sweet, loving Jennifer, who was trying so hard to care for Saral, was also trying to care for her father, who was dying as well. In India in the government hospitals, the family of a patient has to provide their own nursing care, otherwise the patient is ignored, and their needs are not met. How could Jennifer provide this nursing service for Saral when she would have to leave her father behind? She knew that no one would care for him.

Looking at these two, aging people, both of whom needed constant attention, all I could say to Jennifer, is “You are an angel!” What an overwhelming task she was attempting to do! Now as Claudette and I talked with her, Jennifer also broke down crying. She told us how hard she was trying to serve them, how desperately she wanted to help, but how helpless she felt to relieve their suffering. I marveled at her devotion to these two, elderly people. I couldn’t imagine how impossible her task was.

Claudette and I instinctively rushed to hug her. With our arms around her trying to buoy her up, I said to her, “Jennifer, we need to send both Saral and your father to the hospital. They both need IVs and treatment. Can you go and help them?” Not shrinking from an impossible task, Jennifer gladly agreed to go—if Saral and her father could go together. We quickly made arrangements to get both of them on an IV while they awaited transportation to the hospital which apparently couldn’t occur until the next day.

Looking at Saral, I doubted that she would survive, even with Jenifer’s devoted care and with proper medical treatment. She had simply sunk too far down. Realizing that this might be the last time I would see Saral, I hugged her and asked if Claudette and I could say a prayer with her. She was all too eager! The three of us hugged each other and held hands while I prayed, asking God to comfort her and to receive her into His rest. I kissed her goodbye, gave Jennifer one last hug, and then with my heart breaking, slowly walked away.

In spite of the pain, I felt a strange sense of comfort. Part of it came from knowing that Saral’s Heavenly Father would surely warmly and tenderly welcome her into His kingdom, after a lifetime of suffering and hardship. He would be able to finally grant her true healing. She would be leprosy-free at last. I knew that supreme joy awaited her in the next life. I also felt an overwhelming gratitude for Jennifer and her husband (Saral’s grandson), who had so tenderly cared for her through many years of trial and struggle. How grateful I was that God had chosen to send two angels to care for his afflicted daughter throughout her journey in life.

There are many among us who are unsung heroes and angels; many who care seemingly endlessly for Alzheimer patients or emotionally ill family members. There are so many single mothers and fathers who give gentle and unending care to their children, shouldering the burden of being both parents to a child. There are teachers of the physically or emotionally handicapped. There are so many people who unselfishly give of themselves to help alleviate the suffering of others. These are the people that not only inspire us, they ennoble us. Too often their service is not heralded. Often it goes unnoticed by others caught up by the busyness and rush of life. But seen or unseen, acknowledged or unacknowledged, I believe these angels are both seen and acknowledged by God, who accepts and sanctifies their service. To my mind, they also serve as Saviors on Mount Zion, quietly and lovingly doing the work of the Master. How grateful I am for their example and service!

"SHALL WE MAKE A MOVE?": HEEDING THE CALL TO ACTION

“Shall We Make a Move?”: Heeding the Call to Action

By Becky Douglas · June 27, 2018

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We’ve all been in frustrating situations where herding and moving a large group of people is difficult, even seemingly impossible! But Padma, our Chairman of Rising Star Outreach in India, has an excellent way of galvanizing a group of people to get going. She simply says, “Shall we make a move?” It’s a call to ACTION. Everybody comes together and gets in the bus!

As God observes the world and all its problems, I wonder if He doesn’t sometimes secretly want to say behind the scenes, “Shall we make a move?” In other words—do something! 

Once during a visit to a remote and desolated colony, the Mulgavadi Colony, I was distressed to find one of the women that we knew and loved, doubled over and with eyes full of pain. As she weakly stretched out her hand to me, upon touching her, I instantly realized she was burning up with fever. She had been nursing a pain in her stomach for several months. The pain had worsened and at this point her belly was swollen grotesquely. She was pleading to me for help.

This was very early in our service before we had any doctors or nurses working with us. On our previous visit we had encouraged her to get to the leprosy hospital to get some medical help.

From right: Padma, Becky, and Padma’s father.

I wrapped my arms around her to comfort her, and asked her if she had gone to the hospital. She said she had gone. She carefully pulled some pills out of her pocket to show us what the doctor had given her. I looked at the pills. They were Vitamin B pills. “There surely had to be more”, I thought in dismay. “Did the doctor give you any more pills”, I asked? She replied in the negative.

I felt the anger rising in me. Seriously? This woman was obviously battling some serious stomach ailment and all the doctor gave her was Vitamin B pills? Talk about a brush off!

In this colony there was also an adorable elderly blind gentleman. He was a tender and gentle soul, and truly one of my favorite patients. This time when we greeted him, instead of his warm greeting, he silently began to cry. I sat down on the cot next to him and asked him to tell me what was wrong. He pointed to his feet. All his toes were gone, and only a portion of one foot remained. Even through the socks I could see yellow pus oozing out of an infected ulcerous wound. We gave him some pain pills. Since I wasn’t a doctor and didn’t have any doctors working with me, I really didn’t know what else to do.

On the way home from the colony I began to rant about how impotent I felt. I was trying to help these people, but without a doctor, without a car, and without proper funding, what could I do? I was frustrated and felt that when it really mattered, I was helpless to make a difference.

During this visit, a young college-aged volunteer, Jason, was with me. A friend had driven us to the colony and was now returning us home. Jason was silent on the way home. When we were dropped off, Jason turned to me and said, “Tomorrow I’m going back to the colony. I’m going to take those two people to the leprosy hospital myself and make sure someone listens to them and that they receive a proper diagnosis.” I was stunned. This was his first trip to India. Where did he get such chutzpah??

The next day we all pooled our meager funds together and hoped it was enough to hire a cab to take Justin the two-hour drive to the colony, then the 18-mile drive to and from the hospital, and then another two-hour drive back home. He wasn’t even sure he could find the colony. But he was determined to try.

He arrived home late that night, exhausted and dejected. He was even more upset than I had been the day before. He told us that he did finally find the colony after wandering around and asking a bunch of different people for directions. He carefully got the two suffering patients in the cab and to the hospital. They were left to wait for five hours before they were seen.

During the wait, the woman had pulled her feet up under her and was rocking back in forth in pain and whimpering. Two of the nurses began to mimic her and laugh. She felt humiliated, but she couldn’t stop her groanings. When the doctor came in he angrily chastised her for coming back so soon. He prescribed some more pills for her and left. He never touched her. He didn’t examine her. He just scribbled a prescription down on a pad of paper and threw it roughly toward her.

The crippled blind patient sitting on a cot fared no better. The doctor indifferently instructed him to remove his socks. Bending over the edge of the cot, he tried to remove the socks, but not having any fingers it was difficult for him. Justin was busy attending to the other woman and just watched this scenario play out from across the room. The blind man was frantically fumbling with his socks while the doctor impatiently yelled at him to hurry. Our blind leprosy patient lost his balance and tumbled onto the floor. No one reached out a hand to touch him. Once again, the doctor simply wrote a prescription on his pad of paper and threw it toward him. He hadn’t even seen the wounds! Justin ran to help the pitiful patient on the floor and by the time he looked up, the doctor was gone.

Justin was beside himself with grief and anger. After returning the two to the colony, he came home feeling defeated and ineffective. But he had awakened in me a new sense—the power to take action. I now knew I also had to act—it’s just that I wasn’t sure what to do. I prayed for direction . . .

When I returned home to the States the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a story about our work. The next day I was surprised to get a call from a man and his wife who had read the article. They wanted to meet me for lunch. I asked the Chairman of my Board to accompany me to the lunch across town. No sooner had we sat down, then this wonderful couple, Hugh and Ellen Morton, told me they had been very touched by the article in the paper. They wanted to help. Smiling broadly, Hugh asked, “What would you do if we gave you $100,000?”

I couldn’t believe my ears! I almost fainted. I jumped up! “We’d party like rock stars!”, I shouted. My chairman jabbed me in the side with his elbow as if to say, “Have you lost your mind?” But I was so excited I just kept going. “And then,” I paused to get my breath “how about funding a mobile medical clinic that could go from leprosy colony to leprosy colony and deliver medical care?” I couldn’t stop talking. I just kept going on and on about what a difference we could make if we had our own doctors and nurses. I talked about the two people from the Mulgavadi Colony and the treatment they had received when Justin took them to the hospital.

By now, the Mortons were convinced. They loved the plan. We all coordinated a trip to India to check out possibilities. We were joined by a wonderful Indian doctor I had met in Pennsylvania who wanted to help. And thus, our first medical clinic was born. That was in 2004. We subsequently partnered with hospitals and other doctors in India. We later forged a partnership with Americares, who provides most of our medicines without cost.

Today we have several mobile medical clinics delivering service in four states of India. This year alone our clinics will give 40,000 medical treatments, including many life-saving surgeries and even limb reconstructions. All this because a young volunteer refused to be overwhelmed. Without knowing what he could do, he simply took action. He made a move! Thousands of lives have been blessed. Many hundreds of lives have been saved.

I believe Satan wants us to feel overwhelmed and immobilized at addressing the wrongs and problems we see in the world, in our communities, or in our families. “Who do you think you are? What difference can you make? You’re just a student! Or just a housewife! Or just one person! You have no money/experience/skills. What could you possibly do?”  

But I like to think that God, being far wiser, is in our mind saying, “Shall we make a move? Together you and I can change this.” He owns the world and I have learned that He can bring the world to us to accomplish His purposes.

Justin taught me that nothing is too big or too impossible for God to help us change. He just needs us to be willing to make a move!

To learn more about the efforts of Rising Star Outreach, click here. 

THE REMARKABLY SMALL INTERVENTIONS ON WHICH LIVES CAN TURN

The Remarkably Small Interventions on which Lives Can Turn

By Becky Douglas · August 14, 2018

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Dharma glared at the boys surrounding him. One more time he had attacked and hurt one of the other boys in the school. This time, they had had enough, and they banded together to stop the abuse once and for all. They closed in on him, angry and determined to make him pay for his cruelty. A couple of them had picked up sticks and were brandishing them threateningly. His eyes searched desperately for his older brother, Devendran. Surely Devendran would come to his rescue, but Devendran could sense that there was a united effort this time against his brother. Knowing that there was equal resentment against him, he also felt the personal threat. He slinked off to watch the scene from behind a bush.

These two brothers, ages five and six, had terrorized the children in our program from the day they had entered the pre-school. You might ask what kind of damage two small kindergarten boys could have possibly done to bring about this confrontation?

The brothers had come from a very abusive home. Their father was not only violent, but sadistic as well. They had lived lives of literal hell at home from the time they were born. Five or six years of brutal abuse can cause a hardening and shrinking of a vulnerable, tiny soul. The abused become abusers.

The brothers had been dropped off at our school by their mother, hoping that this new environment would be a protection for them against the horror at home. They felt abandoned. They were seething with anger. And they quickly turned the abuse they had learned personally at home, against the other children.

It reached a critical point where we felt that we had to decide whether we could allow these boys to continue to stay at Rising Star or did we need to send them back home? Either decision felt impossible to make, so we did what normally indecisive people do—nothing. We let them stay—unwilling to send them back to more abuse, yet not knowing how to protect the other children. Sadly, instead of getting gradually better, the problems escalated.

We were at our wits end and emotionally torn between the good of these two brothers, and the need to protect the other small children at the school.

Just at this point we had a young volunteer named Justin come to work with us. Almost immediately we noticed the behavior of these two little hellions beginning to change. Instead of being totally disruptive in the classroom, they began to participate in the games and learning exercises. Instead of fighting school, they began to look forward to school. Most markedly, their aggressive behavior against the other children began to diminish remarkably.

I noticed that they always hung close to Justin when he was at the children’s’ home or the school. In fact, they almost seemed inseparable with him. They seemed to hang on his every word. Over just a few weeks they had become visibly calmer, less agitated, and significantly less aggressive.

We all noticed it and wondered what on earth could have caused such a turn-around in such a short period of time. As Justin prepared to leave the volunteer dorm one morning and go over to the school, I pulled him aside and asked him what his magic was? He smiled and told me it was all very simple. He pulled out of his pants pockets two pieces of candy. He said, “I always come with two treats in my pockets. When I saw how disruptive Dharma and Devendran were, I started by pulling the brothers aside and telling them how special they are. Because they are so special, I had a special treat for them. They were not to tell the other children. It was just to be our secret.

Then, within a few days I started adding when I gave them the treat that I thought they were really the smartest boys in the school. I complimented them on how fast they were learning their alphabet sounds. Suddenly they became determined to prove to me that they really were the smartest. Instead of disrupting class, they eagerly tried to learn more and more phonics.”

The change had started! It took a while. I think that Justin stayed with us for close to a year. By the time he left, the two brothers were model students and had even made some friends. Two daily pieces of candy and a few carefully chosen words of validation and love—had created a miraculous change.

Later as our students got older and our school got bigger, we faced other similar situations. I watched this same magic occur once again in another student named “Kumar”. Also from an abusive background, he was an angry loner; withdrawn and sullen. He morosely sat through classes with a wooden face, vehemently refusing to join in.

We had a volunteer come to the campus—Ron. Ron was a very successful businessman. He was also a whole lot of fun and the students immediately gravitated to him out on the playground. Ron noticed that Kumar hung back, eyes downcast. When invited to join in, Kumar shrugged, turned around and walked away. Ron decided then and there that he and Kumar had a lot in common. Ron had also been an orphan at one time in his life and had come from an abusive foster home. He knew the inside feelings of self-doubt and even self-loathing. He knew how desperately wanting to fit in, could actually cause anti-social behavior because of feelings of unworthiness—a hollowness of soul.

Ron began to do a similar thing with Kumar that Justin had done with Devendran and Dharma. He spent special time with Kumar, always seeking him out to walk to and from the school, sitting next to him at lunch, asking his thoughts. He asked to be Kumar’s tutor. He commented to Kumar over and over again about how smart Kumar was! How quickly he picked up concepts! How cool he was! He told Kumar that he was going to request that he be allowed to be Kumar’s sponsor, because he believed Kumar had so much potential and was a kid who was really going to go somewhere in life. And guess what? The same miraculous transformation began to manifest.

Ron returned to campus multiple times and each time it seemed that Kumar had a jumpstart up to the next level of performance. Every time I heard that Ron had returned to campus I wanted to run up and hug him and thank him for caring so much. I might add that plane trips to and from India are expensive and taking time off from running a business also had to be a great sacrifice. But what a difference this man has made in the life of a troubled young man!

Kumar has now graduated and is in college. None of us would have given a plugged nickel for that possibility before Ron had come to campus! The fun part is that this is just the beginning of the story. Kumar will eventually marry and have children of his own, whose lives will be vastly different because a businessman took time to help their father. Their children will eventually marry and have children. They also will be on a completely different trajectory in their lives, than if their grandfather, coming from an abusive environment in a leprosy colony, had not had his life turned around. Like ripples spreading out from a stone tossed into a pond, the effects of this one changed life will echo through generations.

I am certainly no child psychologist, but I have witnessed some interesting things over the years of working with marginalized and extremely disadvantaged children from the leprosy colonies of India. I have seen caring and loving attention literally do the impossible with a difficult child. I have learned that many of the most exasperating kids are kids who have come from very damaging childhoods and are kids who are hurting. I have realized that belligerence and pain are oftentimes closely related. And I have watched love, carefully and consistently administered, be the balm that healed the inner wounds.

Perhaps each of us could be a little more attuned to the inner struggles of those who seem unpleasant. Mother Teresa taught a sublime truth when she said simply, “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” The next time we have to deal with a difficult or disruptive child in a Primary class, or a Young Women’s class or a in a Scout troop, instead of reacting with frustration, let’s send the unmistaken message, You are special to me, I like you, and I believe in you! Hopefully we can remember the power of encouraging words, and maybe even two pieces of candy!