India Children's Home Project Update

We hope you enjoy this brief video of the Sons of Thunder Children’s Home, which we recently visited and launched near Mumbai, India. We are so excited to share in the Father’s heart for the fatherless, and we cannot help but be overwhelmed by the abandonment of His love for all of us when we consider the poor and broken of the world.
We want to update you on the most recent progress of the facility construction, as well as a few changes we are making to upgrade our child sponsorship program.

More Building More Kids
For those who have been a part of this project to date, you will be excited to learn that our children’s home is much larger than we originally planned. Although we began with initial blueprints for a 30-child capacity building, an architectural “accident” caused our floor plan to turn out much larger. Apparently, the Lord wanted us to rescue 20 more kids from the streets, because we will now be able to house 50 children in the home! We do not want a large, warehouse-type orphanage that clinically runs these children through. Instead, we are trying to foster a “home” type environment. So although we will have more space to save the lives of more children, our focus will still remain intimate and caring. We will have room for house parents to live on each floor of the new building, and the added square-footage will even allow for a guest room and office space.

Raising the Upper Room
Currently, the ground floor of our facility is virtually complete, although we are now in the process of plumbing and wiring it, so that children can begin to move in. Our hope is to have funds raised within the next few months to complete construction of the second story. Our international missions team visited the site a few months ago. At that time, building crews had already plastered the interior and tiled the floors of the first level, but the upper floor construction has been on hold for the past few months. Construction is now underway again, and we have another big project ahead of us: a boundary wall!

Help us Build the Wall!
Our children’s home director Joshua Immanuel feels it is very important that we construct a boundary wall around the perimeter of our property for a number of reasons. For one, it ensures the children’s safety from intruders, but it also keeps them from wandering off or getting into danger. In addition, there are wetlands around the area, and Joshua says there are many poisonous snakes!

In addition to the wall, we will also be funding further needs for the facility, including furniture, bedding and other interior supplies. The Lord is releasing provision every step of the way! We began the project by faith with hardly any of the needed budget. When the Lord gives you a vision, don’t wait for all the resources to be lined up in front of you. Step out by faith! You will watch and see the Lord do tremendous things and you will impact many lives when you take the risk to do the thing He’s called you to complete.

Changes to Child Sponsorship
One of the things we have felt is imperative to do is upgrade our child sponsorship program to $50 per month per child. While we had set an earlier estimate of $33 per month, we have since realized this would not be adequate for the level of care we choose to give our children. Besides the fluctuation of U.S. currency abroad, along with standard inflation and cost of living, there are more reasons for this: we want to ensure that the children are properly educated, given necessary medical treatment, properly clothed and well fed. While we originally underestimated what it would cost to cover each child’s needs, be assured that this is still an incredibly low cost to save the life of a child. Furthermore, you can rest assured that Sons of Thunder keeps no administrative fees whatsoever from funds marked for child sponsorship or gifts marked specifically for the children’s home. In fact, we have unloaded quite a bit from our own general fund to get this project moving! So we appreciate you working with us to make a practical Kingdom impact on real lives.

We Want a Million Kids
After completion of this project, our vision is to begin construction on another children's home on the continent of Africa. Please be in prayer with us about this work, as many children are without the most basic necessities of life. Every day, there are more than 16,000 children who die of hunger-related causes. That is one child every five seconds. And more than 800 million go hungry each day. Around the world, more than 11 million children under the age of 5 die from preventable causes, simply because they are too poor to stay alive.

Here at Sons of Thunder, caring for the orphan and the widow will never be a fleeting project or a one-time event. We will continually spend ourselves on the helpless. We will remember the poor. We will never cease to snatch victims from the fangs of the wicked. We do not care one iota about building our own kingdoms or pumping our own little ministry as an end in itself. Such things will be here today and gone tomorrow. We have a higher mandate in mind. Our purpose is to rally the troops to destroy the works of the devil. This is war. All-out war against poverty, sin, sickness and death. We want to rally that remnant of the church that really wants to impact society in our generation so we can work together and corporately make a lasting difference!

Thank you for your continued prayer and financial support of our kids, and we know beyond measure that the Lord will pour tremendous favor and blessing upon you all as you give to these little ones!

John Crowder, 7/5/2008 1