The Arts: Music, Painting, and Dance

Lavanya is in the middle smiling at the camera!

School in India is very important.  They study: English, Telugu, Hindi, Social, Science, Math, and Computers.  Electives are not offered.  So, we decided to bring the electives, The Arts, to each of the homes in order to provide them with a more well-rounded education.

Prim Kumar is teaching the boys the basic musical scale.

Our first endeavor began just last week.  We are bringing music into the homes through worship.  We have a 4-person team of worship leaders from Hyderabad, who have been through worship school training, teaching our children about the heart of worship and training them to sing and play the keyboard.  Each home will be visited twice in the next 3 months for 3 hours of training each time!  So far, the children are loving it!

Rakesh won "Best Young Artist".

In February we will begin our next "arts" course, which will be an painting/drawing course.  We are praying that God will provide a Christian artist to come and train our children in the techniques and artistic expression of drawing and painting.  We have so many children already interested and even one who has already won an award in his city for "best young artist."  We want to encourage and provide an outlet for the creative side of learning to be experienced and for these children to develop their unique gifts.

John Paul with his paintbrush.

In June our last course will begin, dance.  We hope to be able to teach our children how to choreograph and move to the music they are listening to.  Each month when our 110 children gather together they like to do some kind of performance.  Also at Christmas, the children prepare a performance for their church congregation.  We want them to develop these skills and use this as an expression of their love for the Lord.

Here Santhi learns which fingers to use.

All of these experiences will cost money. We need funds to be able to put these dreams into reality.  We have stepped out in faith and started the music training without any support yet, but believing God will provide!  We need to pay for transportation to each of the homes, dinner for the team of teachers coming to teach, and to pay the teachers for their time with our children.

Narsimgolu children doing their performance

Each home visit costs $23. So every week we are spending $46 to bring the arts to the homes.  The worship course is 18 weeks long and we assume that the other courses will be the same length.  We take the worship team to a different home each Tuesday and Thursday evening after school.  The children are loving it and feel so blessed by this opportunity!  Please consider helping us bring The Arts to each of our homes.