Thursday, September 3, 2009

John's Birthday


This evening we had a belated birthday celebration for Br. John Minj. His birthday is August 28. However, the Salesians were having thir annual retreat at the time, and we could not disturb their time with God and with themsleves with a noisy celebration!

Sisters from the two convents next door, the parish priest and Fr. Gregory, Fr. Johnny and Fr. Pius from Kathgaodam graced the occasion. We had tanduri chicken and appam and curry... and of course a nice birthday cake!

John has become quite a celebrity in Jeolikote. Everybody seems to know him! He is a great gardner, and the surroundings of Sumedha Centre are looking quite different (and beautiful) with his vegetable and flower gardens.

John has also begun English classes for the children of the neighbourhood. He started with 12 students about three weeks ago, and today he has about 50 boys and girls as students, and his popularity, in terms of number of studens who attend his classes, is ever on the increase. Infact, now he does his classes in two batches, one for the girls and one for the boys. That was a start move, because he did not want the boys and the girls to be busy with anything else than learning English in his class!