Wrapped up in dirty clothes lay a piece of everlasting.
When I went to southern India in 1946, there was an orphanage, a school, and a hospital on a mission station in Karnataka state, 100 miles south of Bangalore. At first, I worked as a nurse in the hospital and lived in the orphanage with about 150 girls. After working in the hospital for twenty-five years, I was asked to take over the leadership of the orphanage.
Due to the extreme poverty all throughout India, it was not uncommon to have parents bring their children to us, simply because they could not afford to keep them. Sometimes if the parents died, there was no one to look after the little ones—especially girls. Many would take the boys, but they did not want the little girls. So we offered a Christian home for girls.
One morning, not long after I began at the orphanage, an old man came hobbling up the path with a sack in his arms that looked like a pile of dirty clothes. When he got close to me, I could hear a strange whimpering. I leaned over to look, and right away he tried to hand his bundle of dirty clothes to me.
“No, no,” I said. “First you must tell me about your baby.”
The old Hindu explained that the child belonged to his daughter. She had tried to care for her for a while, but when a man offered to marry her (refusing to let the child come along) the mother accepted, leaving her daughter behind.
The grandparents wanted desperately to look after the baby. Every morning, they took her to the fields where they worked, wrapped in a piece of cloth which they hung from a branch of a tree. They would rock her gently until she fell asleep and then go off into the fields. But eventually the infant would awaken, crying with hunger, and they were too poor to get milk for her. She grew weaker each passing day. At last the grandparents admitted that they could not look after her anymore.
It was at that time that someone told them about our home for girls—we would provide a healthy home for their baby. By the time she came to us, she was so sick she couldn’t even cry. That was the whimpering I?heard as this man held out his bundle of dirty clothes.
I remember looking into the little face of a very thin, dirty child, then I exchanged a questioning glance with the person who was helping. “Well,” she said, “I think you’re taking on a problem.”
I was convinced the Lord wanted us to take that problem. We had been praying that the Lord would definitely lead us when anyone came with a baby, and He seemed to say to take her—so I agreed.
The old grandfather took one last look at the wrinkled little bundle, then turned around and walked away with a heavy heart. That child was a part of him; he didn’t want to part with her. As he trudged back down the long driveway, tears were rolling down his face, but he knew that he had done the best thing for her.
Right away we bathed her—she screeched and cried, but for the first time she was clean. Then we brought milk for her and let her drink as much as she wanted! Soon she was fast asleep. Somehow she had gotten hold of a tiny piece of bread. I saw it as I was putting her down on a little mat on the floor, so I tried to pry it from her fingers. She woke up screaming, refusing to let go, so we left it, and she went back to sleep. Even at six months old, she was so used to waking up hungry that she needed to be sure she would have something to eat when she woke up. For several days she wouldn’t go to sleep without a piece of bread to hold in her hand.
Soon she grew into a healthy, happy little girl. She was a very precious treasure to us, so I called her Satyamani. “Mani” means jewel, and “satya” means true. She was our true jewel!
When she was five years old, Satyamani went to school. She did very well with her lessons and she loved to play with the other children.
She was usually a well-behaved girl and rarely gave us any problems. But one day, when I happened to be looking out the window, I saw little Satyamani walking over by the guava fruit tree in front of our house. All of the girls knew they were forbidden to pick the guavas.
Satyamani looked around this way and that, and I guess she didn’t see anyone, so she reached up as far as she could and grabbed the lowest fruit. She pulled with all of her might until the fruit finally came off.
When I called her over to me, she came with her hands behind her back.
“Satyamani, what did you take?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
I asked her to show me her hand. She stuck out one hand. “Show me your other hand,” I said. She showed her other hand. “Now,” I said, “Can you show me both hands at once?” She quickly stuck the guava between her legs in the fabric of her long skirt, and showed me both her hands. “Okay,” I said, “Hold out both your hands and walk over to me.”
Of course she couldn’t do that without dropping the fruit, and the guava rolled to the ground
“What did you do?” was my question.
“I took it.”
“I know you took it,” I said. “What was that when you took the guava?” She couldn’t tell me at first, so I explained that it was called stealing and being disobedient—that was sin in the sight of the Lord Jesus. Satyamani had heard about the Lord many times, and she hung her head in shame.
The result of that little guava incident was that Satyamani came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour. That very day, she kneeled beside me, on our front porch, and she asked the Lord to forgive her of her sin.
We didn’t usually take boys at our orphanage, but at that time we had a toddler boy, David, with us. About a day or so after little Satyamani was saved, she ran to me with a worried expression, “Ama, David won’t believe.”
When I asked her what she meant, she explained, “I told him he had to confess his sin and he had to trust the Lord Jesus as his Saviour, but he won’t do it.”
“Now, Satyamani,” I said, “David’s a very little boy. He doesn’t understand about sin and about confession and about salvation. In a few years, he will.” She was so disappointed, but I rejoiced to see that she was already concerned for the souls of others.
Satyamani sailed through our school up to the seventh grade, and then went on to high school, where she did very well academically. We were going to continue her education with teacher training, but she wasn’t interested—she waited to see what the Lord had planned for her life.
One day, a family came to the orphanage. They were looking for a wife for Bosca, their son—and they wanted Satyamani. As always, we interviewed the young man and found out if he was a Christian. When Satyamani saw Bosca, she whispered to me, “Ama, is he a Christian?”
“Oh, yes,” I told her, “I had a talk with him, and I know that he’s a Christian. He loves the Lord, just like you do.”
“All right,” she said, “I’ll marry him.” And she did!
They are both happily living for the Lord now in Atan. Right across the road from their home is a Tibetan Colony. Satyamani goes there every week and has a Bible study with the children. She says that many of the mothers come with their children. Eternity will reveal the souls she has pointed to Christ, and the love she has shown for His glory.
I’ll never forget those haunting eyes of that little baby—our precious jewel, not only ours; she was precious to the Lord.
Satyamani is one of hundreds of girls who grew up in our orphanage that are being used of the Lord to share the gospel with people of their families and communities throughout India.
The work in the orphanage is presently being efficiently managed by a fine Christian couple, Vijaya and Lawrence Varadaraj. Vijaya was an orphan child whom we raised, educated and married. She is the mother of two children, and has thirty little orphan girls to love and care for as well.
Lawrence and Vijaya are both school teachers, but now devote their time to the work of the Kollegal Mission Station. Lawrence is active in the outreach of the local assembly and valued for his love for the Lord and his ability to preach God’s Word effectively. They are working under the supervision of the Board of Management for the Girls’ Home Trust.
There is also a school, kindergarten to seventh grade, located on the same compound as the orphanage. Vijaya is the School Manager and oversees the work of the teachers. More than 500 boys and girls attend the school, and the Scripture is also taught for one half hour daily in all the classes. This is meaningful because the student body consists of all Hindu and Muslim children.
Lawrence and Vijaya both participate in the Sunday School work and in the teaching of Bible Study classes. The activities of the orphanage and school are highly respected by the area people, and the work continues to be a light in a dark place as they demonstrate the love of the Lord Jesus in word and deed.