Well, I finally have a computer. I don't have the correct cables to hook it up to my old one to transfer files, but I'm thankful that I can pull photos off my camera, access Dropbox and write blog posts and emails. 

My status as a technology "have not" has kept me from posting a wrapup from India, and now I'm not sure where to start. We're in Cambodia right now. We arrived late last night, met up with our good friend, Peter Shumaker, and got to bed at about 1:30 a.m. At 8:30 a.m., I preached a short and hopefully coherent sermon at our church in Phnom Penh. Afterwards, we said goodbye and drove to Battambang, about 5 hours outside the capitol. We're safely at our hotel, and we plan on having some dinner and hitting the pool. We considered visiting the campus tonight, but everyone is pretty darn tired. We'll relax this evening and be fresh for tomorrow.

Despite the computer problems, the India trip finished well. The Scarlet City Church team was wonderful, and they took a ton of great photos and video that I can't wait to share with you soon.  I have lots of pics of my own, so many in fact that I can only post a small portion of them here. 

We enjoyed a church service with our Kalimpong staff and kids, and also had the privilege of baptizing some of them. We then took all of the older kids to Darjeeling to visit the zoo. It poured down rain most of the day, and was quite cold. Nevertheless, it was a great time. We said our goodbyes to the kids after a great day, and spent the night in town before heading down to Siliguri. 

We spent most of the day driving through heavy fog. We zigzagged back and forth across the India/Nepal border, but were unable to see much of Nepal. I can say that I urinated in the country along the roadside. Too much information, I know. But I was happy to step foot in Nepal and add it to my list of countries visited.  And I had to pee. Again, too much information, I know.

Along the way, the rain stopped long enough to allow us a short hike into the tea fields. To call them beautiful would be an understatement, and I have neither the talent nor the equipment to do them justice in photographs. I will cherish the memories every time I drink a cup of Darjeeling tea.

We visited a plot of land that we would one day like to buy -- if we could swing the whole piece, we could put at least 10 homes there! But more on that later. We still have to finish our project in Cambodia; let's not get ahead of ourselves... 

We all flew to Delhi, and the Scarlet City guys left for home. My family and Adam hit the city to do some sightseeing. Delhi is an amazing place, everything you can imagine in an ancient Indian city and more. We stopped at a perfumery that has been in business since 1816, and bought some custom scents. We ate more naan than you'd think possible, and may have had closure on tandoori chicken. At least for a week or so. 

I miss India already, especially the staff and kids. Please keep praying for church partners; we desperately need at least two new churches to take over the sponsorship of homes in Kalimpong.

Thank you for making all of this possible through your prayers and financial support. Together we're changing the world. 

Well, today has been a day of both frustration and joy. Frustration? My laptop is broken beyond repair, or at least beyond the kind of repair I can get here. I've ordered a replacement, which will be coming via a friend next week, but I'm frustrated. Aside from the money I've had to spend, I have no access to some of my important files and no way of editing photos. I have meetings this week that require, at least theoretically, some of those files.

Sigh. First world problems, right? 

So I'm trying to take things in stride and not stress too much about things I can't control. I am praying that when I do get the new one, I'll be able to transfer all of the files. There was no impact damage, so I'm assuming the data is fine. 

For now, I'll try to relax and thank God that I have an iPad to keep up with correspondences and put up some posts, rudimentary as they may be. I'm thankful that we have another -- and better -- photographer on this trip. I'll try to post links to Danny Jackson's photos so you can see what's going on in India.

Other than catastrophic technical failure of the ol' MacBook, today was pretty great. We took some time in the morning to explore the town of Kalimpong, wandering its crowded and somewhat chaotic streets. We bought a couple scarves at a local textile shop, and spent an hour or so in the produce market marveling at the sights, sounds and smells.This is truly a remarkable country with many extraordinary experiences to be had. 

After lunch, we joined a large group of our kids and staff at a swimming pool a couple miles from town. The water was quite cold, as the temperature here has been in the 60s and perhaps 70s for weeks, but I had the privilege of baptizing six people -- one staff member, two staff children and three of our teenagers. What an honor to share this important milestone in these people's lives.  

Tomorrow morning we'll join all of the kids and staff for church. Gabe DeGarmeaux will preach, Adam, Janelle and I will sing, as will all of the Asia's Hope kids. It's a long service -- at least two hours, so I hope my own kids emerge with good attitudes intact. But I can't wait. Who knows? Maybe God will heal my laptop while we're in the service. Stranger things have happened.

Yesterday, Nandu and I left Kalimpong extra early to pick up the team from Scarlet City Church -- just in case. Over the last week or so, there have been numerous landslides and boulder bounces along the road to Siliguri, and we knew there was a chance we'd be delayed. 

Not far outside of town, Nandu noticed that there was no traffic coming from the other direction and correctly concluded that the road must be closed somewhere down the line. He made a phone call to confirm, and we pulled off to take the "scenic" route. The route was indeed picturesque -- soaring mountains and plunging valleys, pine forests draped in prayer flags and hillside tea plantations shrouded in fog. It was also twice as far. Instead of going directly to Siliguri, we went first to Darjeeling and then cut over, adding at least two hours to the journey.

Not far from Darjeeling we stopped at a little town and ordered momos -- the local version of pork dumplings -- and tea. Once again, our breakfast proved that the very best meals can be found in the simplest establishments. No New York chef could have improved on any facet of the meal, and we ate our fill for only a couple of dollars.

We arrived at the airport just in time. The team's plane arrived on time, and they stumbled out onto the tarmac and into the tiny Bagdogra airport. Relieved but slightly rumpled from more than 30 hours of travel, all five of them -- plus my good friend and board member Adam Heath -- gathered their bags and exchanged tired greetings with Nandu and me before grabbing a bite to eat with us and heading on up the mountain towards Kalimpong. We encountered heavy traffic and some sketchy pavement conditions on the way up, but were able to take the main road which had been cleared from the earlier landslides. 

Four hours later, we arrived in Kalimpong, ate dinner at the hotel and headed to bed. Overnight my oldest son, Chien, developed some stomach trouble, and spent most of the hours between 10pm and 3am vomiting. He stayed at the hotel all day, while the rest of my family and the team joined the kids and staff for a 3 hour dance and music recital, an hour or so of games and freestyle disco madness. We then enjoyed a wonderful lunch made by our staff and members of Nandu's church.

The kids were awesome. They've been working for months on their songs and routines, and they were just radiant. All of us were moved by their performances and felt the love of God just wash over all in attendance. 

Tomorrow we will spend the day playing with the kids, most of whom have finished school for the term. Saturday, we're doing more activities and having a baptism service. Sunday, church. Monday, we'll be taking about 50 of the kids up to Darjeeling with us to see the zoo, have a picnic and play games. And so on. And before we know it, the trip will be finished. The Scarlet City team will return to Columbus, and my family will head to Cambodia.  

I hope you enjoy the pictures. They can't begin to convey the beauty and the joy we're experiencing here. But at least you'll have a little taste. 

Executive Director John McCollum with 3 year old Anjela

At three years old, Anjela faced more danger than I have seen in my entire life.

Her mother had committed suicide and her father, an alcoholic, went on blinding benders for days at a time. When he ran out of money for drink, he would sell one of his children, usually for less than $100. When he finally sobered up, he never knew what happened to his now missing child. 

All of Anjela's four older siblings had already been sold as slaves. Only Anjela remained. Her father, drinking again, was on the brink of handing Anjela over to traffickers in exchange for a few dollars when she was rescued by a local pastor in her hometown of Jaigon, near the India-Bhutan border.

When she came to Asia's Hope just a few short months ago, she was emaciated and traumatized. Today, she is healthy and happy, and shares a home with loving parents and other children like her. 

Unfortunately, Anjela's home does not yet have a sponsoring church to provide permanent funding. Of course we will never let a child go simply because we do not have a church partner, but we are taking funds from other places to support this home, and we cannot rescue any more kids until we can sustain funding for those already in our care. 

Please pray for Asia's Hope. Pray that we can find church sponsors immediately for two more homes in India.  In the meantime, will you consider giving or asking your church or company to give where most needed so we can continue to provide Anjela and the kids without a sponsoring church the same great care we give all of our children?

Contact me directly if you have any leads on a partnering church! 

When children come to us, they've often led lives of deprivation and despair. They're usually not ready to start "regular" school due to serious educational, nutritional and social delays. Staff in each Asia's Hope country have to give these children special care and work with educators to create tailored solutions that meet their unique needs.

In India, we have a large number of young children who, prior to coming into our care, have never had any sort of education at all. Rather than trying to mainstream them immediately, we've begun home schooling them. By default -- due to the numbers -- our home school is becoming larger, and more complex. In fact, it's run very much like the one-room schoolhouses that once formed the backbone of the American education system. 

Unfortunately, we don't have a separate stream of funding for our little schoolhouse in India (nor do we have full funding for our large, k-6 Christian school in Cambodia). So if any of you reading would like to help us raise funds specifically for early childhood education, please contact me! 

At any rate, we got up this morning, braved the dense fog that blanketed Kalimpong city and we grabbed a quick breakfast before heading out with Nandu to a local sporting goods store -- a tiny wooden stall on a busy street, not the Dick's Sporting Goods you may be imagining -- and bought some basketballs, soccer balls and volleyballs for the kids at the school. We then headed to our mini-campus, which houses homes 1 and 2 and the schoolhouse.  

We passed out the balls to the most of the kids' delight. Some of the newer kids are shellshocked, and don't quite get what to do with toys, or with people giving them things, for that matter. The playground was absolute chaos for about 45 minutes. Then we divided some of the older kids into teams and played a few rounds of Steal the Bacon (Steal the Chicken here, since no one knows what bacon is in this part of the world).

Afterwards, we shared a delicious lunch of rice, dal (curried lentils) and beef. We left afterwards so the kids could practice a performance they've put together to welcome the soon-to-arrive teams from North Church and Scarlet City Church in Columbus, Ohio.

I love these kids. It's so interesting to see the difference between the ones who have just arrived, those who have been with us for a year, and those who have been together for much longer. They're all in different places developmentally and relationally, but they're all so precious. 

I have a special place in my heart for the kids I know the best, but all of them are great. Please pray for more sponsoring churches. We are in urgent need of two sponsoring churches in India and one in Cambodia. Having spent time with these kids, and having seen the impact on churches who partner with us, I can't imagine why anyone would not want to jump in with both feet. But we're trusting God. He continues to provide for us, and we know that he has given us these kids for a reason.

As you look at these pictures, will you pray for permanent supporting churches for the kids from Kalimpong 3 -- and for those who will be Kalimpong 4. May God bless us all as we work hard for these wonderful children. 

Finally, after too many days of travel and what was ostensibly a relaxing time "off," it's really great to be back among the kids and staff of Asia's Hope. It's a big difference traveling as a tourist and being hosted as a family member. 

We visited our newly-rented facility, a spacious one-acre (although much of it is overgrown at the moment) plot with two kitchens, ample play areas and a one-room school house where most of our kids k-5th grade study and a large, three-story house that serves as home for Kalimpong 2 and Kalimpong 3 children's homes.

Eventually, we will buy land somewhere and build separate single-family dwellings for each home like we have in Cambodia and Thailand. But for now, both of the homes have separate floors in the building, separate entrances and function as individual families. And that's really what's important. Buildings play a role in big role in our strategy, but they're not the foundation. The most important thing is that each child has a mom and a dad, and belongs in a family.

We also visited the Kalimpong 1 home, which has also recently moved into a new, more spacious place. We didn't spend much time with them, because all of the middle- and high school students were studying hard for tomorrow's final exams.

We joined Nandu, Anu and their children Apphia and Nicholas for dinner at their house which is now quite empty. The Kalimpong 3 kids moved into their new space, and now Nandu and Anu have only 12 kids (who will one day be part of Kalimpong 4) living with them.  

(Parenthetically, I should point out that we don't even have a sponsoring church for home 3 -- we've been surviving on generous donations to feed the "extra," or "provisional" kids. Please pray for a sponsor -- soon!) 

My daughter Xiu Dan and Apphia are the same age, same size and like the same things. They are going to be good friends. 

Tomorrow we will spend more time with the kids, and then in a couple of days we'll take off toward Gangtok for a retreat with just our family and Nandu's. The kids will keep themselves busy somehow, and Nandu and I will dig deep into strategic and tactical discussions.  

I'm hoping the weather is clearer tomorrow. I would really love to see the Himalayas on this trip, but everything has been draped in fog. But as always, we will take what the day gives us. Good night! 

Greetings from Cloud City.

All of Kalimpong is shrouded in a thick fog this morning. The monsoon season has come to India, and even when it’s not raining, the clouds always hold the threat of a sudden and intense downpour. Pedantic me advises that it’s mathematically impossible, but colloquial me insists that it’s about 140% humidity out there. Still, it’s much nicer here than in Delhi, where the temperature will reach 104F today. In Kalimpong, we can expect the low 80s.

We arrived here last night after a long, scenic and somewhat harrowing drive from Siliguri, which lies two hours – or four, or five, depending on weather and road conditions – down the mountain. Our Indian director, Nandu, and his wife Anu met us at a hotel in Siliguri and drove us the rest of the way. They had intended to meet us at the airport but were delayed by a landslide that killed a number of motorists, missing Nandu and Anu by only a kilometer or two.

Leaving Siliguri, we faced intense traffic, but enjoyed relatively straight and flat roads that could easily fool a first time traveler into thinking that the road to Kalimpong isn’t nearly as bad as he had heard. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your preferences – we exchanged heavy traffic for poor roads about a half hour outside of town.

Carved into the side of a mountain, this “major Indo-Chinese highway” is only slightly wider than one lane of an American interstate. That would be fine, if traffic only went one way on these roads. But here, huge trucks, tiny cars, SUVs and motorcyles all vie for position in what is practically indistinguishable from a massive game of chicken. If you want to pass (which, of course, every driver wants to do – all the time), you lay on your horn, flash your headlights and jam on the gas. If you possess sufficient skill and more than a little luck, you won’t encounter an oncoming vehicle and get forced off the side of the cliff into the rushing waters of the Teesta below.

Transit drama aside, we arrived safely in Kalimpong shortly after dark and checked into our hotel. The Silver Oaks hotel is a raj-era retreat that looks like something your English grandmother would design. For a Wes Anderson film. It’s a little more expensive than I would like, but it’s really the only game in town if you want internet access and proximity to town.

We’re all sleeping together in one big room – Xiu Dan in the big bed with mom and dad and the boys on their own beds. We slept well, ate a big breakfast and now we’re resting before Nandu comes by to take us to his house. We’ll spend some time with his family and then begin visiting the kids and staff of Asia’s Hope. We’ve rearranged some of our facilities; all of them are rented at this point except for Nandu’s house, so we will continue to move around until we can find land that we can afford to build on.

We’re all ready to see the kids. It’s been nice having a few days’ vacation, but we’re getting stir crazy. We didn’t come here to see the monuments and hang out in hotel rooms.

I’ll have pictures later.

It's only 9pm, but I feel like it's half-past midnight. We've had an enjoyable but exhausting couple of days. We flew from Bangkok to Delhi, spent a day in Delhi, drove 5 hours to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and 5 hours back. Tomorrow we fly to Siliguri and drive up into the foothills of the Himalayas into Kalimpong. 

I'm greatly looking forward to being in Kalimpong. I miss my Indian staff and kids, and it will be nice to be back in Asia's Hope's world after spending a few days as tourists. It'll also be nice to get out of the brutally hot weather. Delhi reached 106F/41C today. Kalimpong is going to be about 79F/26C. Nice. 

I'm also looking forward to spending a few nights in the same place, rather than putting the kids through a constant circuit of check-ins and check-outs. Don't get me wrong. Bangkok was nice. Agra was beautiful. Delhi is exhilarating. But Kalimpong is our Indian home, and I'm ready to settle in with friends and family for a while.