Phase 48: July to September 2011

Assist others, especially in hard times! Saradha, our young child minder, often had to experience hard times. The violent death of her mother, the murder of her brother, and then in July her father died. We fulfilled his last wish and so he found his final resting place on the top of a mountain.

Actually, she simply wanted to leave the baby with us, but we were able to convince the mother to not give up and try to take care of her baby with our assistance and support. In this case too it was the familiar story. A secret love, running away from home, pregnancy, misery and then being abandoned without a roof over the head and without the slightest idea, how to manage her life.

Assist the poor in their own efforts to find a solution. According to this motto Little Smile also supports these jungle monks, who are living together with ordinary people in remote and poor villages trying to show them the right way. With our construction plans and materials the villagers are building a place to live and pray for these monks.

"Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them!"
After 11 years the simple wooden cross in the children’s village has become rotten. A storm in July uprooted an ebony-tree. And thus, we made a new cross for the temple area from its trunk – the hard black wood will probably last a century.

Almost half of the children in Mahagedara were born into the Hindu tradition. Together with them all the others are celebrating their holy festivals and also invite the priests by whom the ancient religious customs live on.

It doesn’t matter what the label says, it’s important what’s inside! Important is to pave the path to a peaceful future beyond religious borders for children, who grow up without parents in a society in which temptations of consumption are destroying old values. Evening after evening there is meditation, praying and thinking under the mighty Boddhi tree.

Michael Kreitmeir will never forget the 17th of August 2010, the day he and his son, a child minder and two children had been arrested under a pretext. One day later the founder of Little Smile was put in prison. Since his release, Kreitmeir takes care of his former fellow inmates. On the anniversary he delivers a complete infirmary for the place he once experienced suffering and pain.

Michael Kreitmeir has never swayed with the wind and even now being the “guest of honor” at the prison in Monaragala, he will never forget his former fellow inmates. On August 18th 2010 he was put in prison. His life took a positive turn, while the situation of his former fellow inmates remained the same and their lives are passing without meaning and purpose. The fact, that this white man has not forgotten them, represents for many of them their only hope.