Today I was in school for my 'babies' group from 10-11 as planned. It is great to see such progress in them in a comparatively short time too. Buvena is now holding and releasing objects, her grip was largely non-existent before, she has better head control and is generally taking an interest in what is going on and has a delightful babble. Santosh is just a load of fun, he has the most bewitching smile and tries really hard to do things asked of him. His tone is very high and so any controlled movement takes a huge amount of effort. Baby Blessy is just irresistible, her mood depends really on whether it is time to eat, sleep or be awake as with most 6 month old babies. Today it was her turn to prove to me that her bladder works! What really gladdens my heart though is to see the three mothers for once not focussing on their children but:
a)Trusting us to work with them
b)Chatting amongst themselves, supporting each other and really relaxing.
Having said the three mothers, I definitely do not mean to exclude Blessy's father who is sitting in the background and comes faithfully with his wife and daughter every day. He has a lovely way with her, in fact they both do. It is so good to see them growing in confidence with her though, as they pick up ideas from what they pick up in class and from the other parents. She was hungry the other day and they only had water, so Santosh's mum gave them a biscuit and showed them how to break it down with a little water and feed it to them. It's such a privilege to be part of all this.

Most of the work with the children is on an individual basis, working 1:1 with Joel, Metti or I, as developmentally they are not really ready to work with a group. We start each session all together though with a hallo song and end with a goodbye song.
The older group's mothers have the same sort of relationship developing and I am so glad. One of the aims of my project was that I find a way to support mothers - so I am so happy to see it happening with little involvement of school staff.
This evening was the long awaited 2nd anniversary memorial 'service' for Bishop Jason along with the launch of the English book of tributes and memories that I have been working on for weeks. It was delivered by the press as promised at 12 noon today in time for the 6.00pm service. We gathered in the garden at Lydia's house on plastic chairs at 6.00pm in sweltering heat, it has been around 38 degrees this week! There were various pastors and lay people paying tribute. I sang Be Thou My Vision more or less successfully. I think I may have wobbled at the beginning as I was rather nervous... singing with a microphone to 200 people is not my usual occupation, especially when I realised that the other two songs were being sung by professional singers with CD accompaniment. I had Thomas the guitarist on keyboard. Which is not to belittle him, he played really well, it is just a little difficult to focus on a starting note and point especially when the sound is coming through 4 foot high speakers and you are at the other end of the garden to the keyboard. That meant I could not even 'read' his fingers as he played - which is my usual method! The Bishop was unable to make it at the last minute, so I was asked to 'launch' the book officially too!
Still now it is done, I shall be able to relax a little more, slowly my responsibilities are disappearing along with my time here.