Grace Children's Orphanage, India

    We are happy to share with you a letter sent by David Raju and Grace Children's Orphanage.  They are in need of support to finish the orphanage NATHHAN families helped build in 1997/98.  The also have children that need individual family's that support them.  Sending letters via e-mail is a great way to correspond with them.  We have had some frustration in sending letters and information via regular mail.  At one point, our address had been illegally sold in India by  someone and we had no end of solicitations for money from India for 5 years.  So, consider finding ways to put money into Grace Children's Orphanage's account without using the mail system just part of the donation to them.  You'll be glad you did.    Visit their web site at  http://livingsounds.org/graceco/

Grace Children's Orphanage

Godavari Palem,

Mogaltur - 534 281

West Godavari District, Andhra Predesh

SOUTH INDIA

Phone: 08816-37702

This is a worth while cause. David Raju and family are hard at work spreading the gospel and caring for children who have no home. 

We have left his letter in original form.  It is kind of fun to read just as it is.  You would not believe how much work it is for them to write in English to us.

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Dear NATHHAN families,

Greetings from grace children's orphanage, India

Grace children’s orphanage history:

Right from my younger stage, I am a fully dedicated Christian and also learnt a lot about Jesus and am spiritually involved. I have a sincere love and fear and  a lot of love to god.

In the year 1979 in the first week of may I was working in Mumbai. One famous pastor rev.  Paramjyothi came to attend a crusade and I attended this crusade. I went to the crusade to hear his word of god. Then I went to him   to convey my greetings personally.  He requested me to marry an orphan girl in wings of healing children’s home , which is run by rev. Paramjyothi.

I interpreted his word as the will of god and I agreed to marry that orphan girl. Very soon,  in may 21, 1979 I married her.  In that  way I invited that  orphan girl in to  my life  and loved her so much. In the year 1993 I was called upon by the word of god to preach the gospel and as per the word of god I came to the gospel and ministered in surrounding places of Andhra Pradesh.

At that time when I saw  a lot of  fatherless children in some areas, I  got an intention to start an orphanage for those poor  children and prayed for this need to  god. I got a spiritual guidance to run the grace children’s  orphanage.(ps,41:1) I started this as a sister organization besides the church ministry. I started this home with 10 children in the year 1995.   In the year 1996, a great cyclone stormed our place.  At that time nearly 2000 people died and many children became homeless, destitute, hungry and even lost their fathers. I was  also in this cyclone storm area with my wife and 4  children. Our house roof was also washed away by this heavy cyclone. At that time  I went to a building to safeguard our lives.  At that time god saved our family and the children and some families with us.

”Praise the Lord” for all his miracles. Entire district was affected with this heavy cyclone and thousands of people became shelter less and starved with hunger. At that time i decided to admit some more fatherless  children into our home. During that time about 50  children joined in our home.(james,1:27).  We informed about our orphanage to some of friends and ministries abroad. Since we cannot fulfill all the needs of these children with the available local funds we have decided to establish communication links with Christian organizations abroad and  raise the necessary funds.

During this period I attended a Christian convention as a gospel singer and a musician. On that day I met a missionary pastor Ezra, and requested him to give me some addresses of foreign Christian organizations. He gave me an address of a foreign organization known as ‘home work’.  I contacted the ‘home work’ organization through letter correspondence. Through them I was introduced to a magazine called ‘teaching home magazine’. In 1995 they allotted me a gift subscription for one year. When I further contacted some more Christian organizations, I came to know about another magazine called ‘new attitude’. The ‘new attitude’ magazine used to publish the letters written by our children in their ‘pen pal bulletin’ article. Latter on one pen pal friend introduced us to another magazine called ‘no greater joy’ in march-97. By reading an article published in page-8 of march-97 edition we came to know about ‘nathhan’ news. In that article they have asked to send details of special needs children. By seeing that article I was encouraged to contact them. In this way I contacted ‘nathhan’ news. 

NATHHAN was very pleased by our organization and gave us a lot of encouragement. An article about our ‘grace children’s orphanage’ was published in the ‘nathhan news’ winter 1997/98 magazine page no:12). Nathan families extended their helping hands and latter on the number of children who joined our home rose to 100 as more and more  children joined our home. All those ministries and families  abroad helped us with great love and compassion towards the poor. Many individual families and ministries encouraged us with support and prayers.

With god’s abundant blessings, the ‘grace children’s orphanage’ is presently running well. All those who know about our orphanage are really encouraging and praying for our orphanage.  We also wanted to expand this orphanage and  take up other activities in our area. We encouraged India evangelism, widows support, Tabitha sewing center for poor girls (training school), and other several activities. We are also concentrating on establishing schools in rural areas and working for  their development. We distribute note books, uniforms conduct sports and games in these schools. We also encourage rural churches development.  We also extend regular support to the pastors and their families.  We have also constructed separate building for our orphanage. By god’s grace and through generous support of Nathan families we are able to  do  this good work. But we are still in the process of achieving our goals and we still need to construct some more rooms, dining hall, play ground and toilets for the children. We are sincerely trying to obtain help from supporters for this divine work.  

We are also conducting pastors’ fellowship meetings every month. We help widows by distributing rice and clothes as well as money every month. We distribute tracts and gospel literature in every town and city around this area. We are a non-profitable organization. We are not only committed to our place but we also want to expand our ministry to some other places in India.(2cor,9:9).

Recently some disasters like Gujarat earth quake took place and thousands of people died.  According to the government survey nearly 5000 children became orphans. The government made an announcement to the charitable organizations to help these orphan children. We have intentions to admit those children into our orphanage.  Some sponsors are enquiring us about adopting orphan children of our home. But we are not able to give response to them, because our government is not accepting any adoptions. Since we have no chance to accept any requests for adoptions we decided to safeguard these orphan children in our institute itself. We are providing them good education, good food, accommodation and fulfilling all their needs.    We are guiding them spiritually in every manner. (Prov. 6:22)

If any body wants to sponsor one or more children  on regular basis we will send the bio-data of the child or children to them who wish to sponsor. We will be writing to them about the welfare of the child from time to time. The sponsors can come to India  and see the child, they can also teach the children about god and they can provide many more things to these children.

They can also pen pal with our children.  We are also thankful for the previous sponsors who supported our ministry. We are also thankful for every generous individual for their regular support and we love them and pray for them in our regular prayers.

Since from the past 2 years even though we are getting some help, most of the Nathan families have stopped extending their financial help as they have their own financial problems. We are getting  the help of only 4 families from abroad. We are facing lot of problems due to insufficient funds, we are carrying out our activates with great difficulties. We are sincerely praying god and asking him to show us new sponsors who can extend their financial help.

We are very much thankful to the directors of ‘nathan’ for extending their kind help in the initial stages of development of our orphanage and we  are always grateful to them. (Rom. 28:8).

We welcome the services of any new sponsors in continuing our services and in achieving our ambitious goal of standardizing our orphanage services.

We thank god for providing us this opportunity.

We look forward to meet you again through this web site.

In his service,

N.j. David Raju\

   gracechildrenorphanage@rediffmail.com