Karuna Dasari

She looked so familiar to me but where might I have seen her before? As I spoke to the 38 Christian school teachers and school leaders in India, my eyes moved back to her.

During the break I walked to her table and she introduced herself:
My husband came to the U.S.A. to study theology after he was finished with it, he was given a teaching position in a seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

His teaching job brought my family to the U.S.A. and we made that our home for 20 years. At the end of that time we left our adult children in Minneapolis and my husband and I moved back to India. I have 3 children – 2 boys and 1 girl and they are all married. I have 5 grand children from ages 2 to 6. I love my grand children and I pray for them everyday and I visit them at least once a year.

It was difficult for me to imagine living so far from my children and grandchild and when I asked her whether she wouldn’t rather return to Minnesota to be with her family, she said, “Oh yes, but then who would care for my orphans?” Karuna’s story continues:

With God’s help and strength my husband and I continued to develop gospel missions which my husband started in 1979. Along with church planting an orphan home has been running since 1986. We started a Christian day school in 1998 and it continues to this day.

After my husband passed away in the year 2000 I have remained in India to work with my own people. I love the children and I want to help Moriah Orphan Children and the Moriah School as long as the Lord permits me to do this ministry.

• There are 360 children in the school from L.K.G. to X class (lower kindergarten through grade 10). 95% of them are non-Christians. They are taught God’s Word and we sing songs and choruses every day. I pray that Moriah School will grow to be large in order to educate more non-Christian children to be the future church of God.

• There are 50 children in the orphan home and some of them are semi-orphans, meaning that one parent is dead.

• My heart’s desire in the Lord is to bring more orphan children into the home and raise them for Christ. I want to give them basic education and train them in some Vo-Tech courses so that they can work and live comfortably in their adulthood. There are some former children of Moriah Orphanage who are now graduates and postgraduates, police people, small business owners and hotel managers. I thank and praise God for this.

Many Christian teachers in India have orphanages in order to care for children who have been abandoned. As Karuna spoke I realized that I hadn’t met her before but it was the expression in her eyes that I recognized. It was the expression I have seen before in the eyes of those who give their lives in service to others. They know that serving those in need is that point in the cosmos where God’s marvelous grace is met with our humble gratitude.

With Christians in so many countries supporting missionaries, why should we help Christian schools? A teacher in India answered that question for us:

When I was a child my parents wanted me to get a good education. The best schools in our area were Christian schools. My parents were of a different faith but they saw that the Christian school taught the morals and good conduct that my parents wanted me to learn. In that school I learned about Jesus and became a Christian. Now I have started my own Christian school. It has an excellent reputation and we have many children of parents who are not Christians. When you teach a child about our gracious God and about the saving faith of Jesus Christ, you teach future generations.