What an exciting week and long week it has been! Last week we purchased the big cooking equipment so that mean that this week we increased the meals we pass out from 50 to 75! I also found out last week that a local news channel wanted to come and film us passing out the food and perhaps even invite us into the studio to talk more about this project. I have to be honest, I was very nervous about allowing the news cameras to come into the slum as I wasn't sure how the community in Lakhtokia would react. Each week has been so smooth and joyful, I didn't want to create chaos or cause anyone to feel as if we were invading their privacy. However, we all decided it was an incredible opportunity to spread the word locally so we went forward with it!
I excitedly woke up yesterday morning and started prepping the kitchen for cooking when the power went out... my stomach dropped a bit. We cook everything by electricity and have not had a problem in the five months we have been feeding the kids. During the summer the power goes out frequently so I knew I should have a back up plan but we won't receive our gas stove until today and therefore couldn't make the dal or rice on our own stove. I thought surely it would be a quick outage as they usually are but time stretched on and on without power... Rosie and Kelly came out to help and we decided to ask our coworkers if we could go upstairs to use their gas so on went the dal. The problem was the 10 pounds of rice that needed cooking and needed cooking quickly. A friend came up with the plan to take it to the hospital so while some of us stayed back two people went to the surgical center to plug in the rice! Eventually everything cooked, but I was sweating there for a minute! The news people arrived, filmed a bit at the house and off we went to Lakhtokia.
Passing out the food felt as if there wasn't anything different. Many of our regular kids arrived back from picking trash just in time to receive a meal and to hang out. There were lots of hugs, excited chatter and seventy five or so (we ran out of rice) meals were passed out to seventy five outreached hands. As usual, it never feels like its time to go so we all hung out for awhile, I enjoyed some chai with my friend Sima since I couldn't go to her house and we told the children that on Tuesday they would be picked up for a street kids day. The two men from the news asked if they could help on a weekly basis to pass out the food because they enjoyed it so much. How incredible!! Seventy five meals went so quickly I think we will have to make one hundred from here on out!
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