This week, Sharon, Catherine, Jenny, Suzanne and Rachel are in Chennai spending time with Kevin and Deborah and all the children who are part of the sponsorship project.

The team have spent this first afternoon visiting  homes in the slum with Kevin and his brother David. The people live along the riverbank. Each house has just one small room (about 10 foot square) which often accommodates up to 8 family members. It's the cooler season at the moment but even now the English find the rooms unbearably hot. Taking a tour of the slum area is a great opportunity for the team to acclimatise and see the families in the context of their homes before they come individually for interviews at the church later this week.

If you've seen the video about Grassroots' work here, you might remember the lady who is interviewed at the beginning? The team visited her today at her sister's house where she and her three children are currently staying. Sadly, things are very difficult for her at the moment. Her husband has left and she is very ill with tuberculosis.  Please pray for her as she goes to the hospital next week for prolonged treatment, and for her sister who will be caring for her children as well as delivering food to her while she is an in patient.

This is just one example of many similar stories of families affected by illnesses which should be preventable.  Typhoid, cholera and TB are common in the slum dwellers. This has opened discussion into what could be done and the team have been thinking about immunisation programmes and home water filtering systems, just like those being used in Tanzania.

In the early evening the team visited the after school club and were excited to see 150 children receiving their evening meal.

Tomorrow the children will start to come for their individual catch up, medical assessments and sponsorship photos. The team are looking forward to meeting them and their parents or guardians. Kevin has trained two of the young staff from the after school club to work as translators for this process - please do pray for them in this key role.

There will be further posts on this blog through this week with more specific requests for prayer.