Another Celebration and a Surprise for the Children

Yesterday I told you about my birthday party on Saturday. Actually, this party was supposed to start in the morning already with a big lunch of the children and a surprise for them. On Saturday however, there were local elections in an area of Vrindavan and as a lot of our children come from that part of town, they got a holiday on Saturday. This is how we got another chance to celebrate again and in this way we even could celebrate another occasion: Thomas and Iris’ 10th Indian wedding anniversary!

The children arrived this morning, thinking it would be another usual day of school. They we surprised when they were called for lunch and we and our guests were sitting there already, waiting for them to join us and start the meal! We all ate together with them and afterwards, when all were full, we got together once more for the surprise: all children got new school bags!

This was my family and friends’ birthday gift for me! They had a bag made for each child which we could now distribute. The biggest gift are the beautiful smiles of our school children! How they took their bags, turned them in their hands, examining them carefully and opening each zipper to check how much space they had in the new bags!

My birthday was not the only thing we celebrated like this however! Today is another very special day: it is Thomas and Iris’ 10th Indian wedding anniversary! We can hardly believe that it has already been so long but really, ten years ago, Thomas and Iris came to our Ashram for the very first time. It was in 2005 that we got to know each other in Germany and they then travelled to India and came to us. Here, they had their Indian wedding ceremony – and of course we had to celebrate that as well!

So it was like a third birthday party and an anniversary celebration which we shared with the children!

I am happy to have such a wonderful family and beautiful friends – and it is great that I can share this all with you in this way as well! I hope someday you will join us for one of our celebrations, too!