Orphan Girl Puts Trust in Jesus in India

After seeing several baptisms, she wants her grandfather to be baptized.

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Parisudha, is 9 years old. Her name means “one who is holy.” But she hardly knew the meaning of her name or what it expected of her life.

Only recently, to her surprise, she learned all that when she came to know of Jesus at a Seventh-day Adventist boarding school in southern India.

Pari, as teachers and friends call her, already loves reading about Jesus in Psalms 23, her favorite Bible passage.

Pari smiled shyly as she recited the psalm from memory.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” she said in her native Tamil language. “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.”

Pari paused partway through the recitation, her bashfulness causing her to forget the words as she spoke in the principal’s office at James Memorial Higher Secondary School. The principal, who sat nearby, gently prompted Pari.

“He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake,” Pari said. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

Pari has been literally walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Her father, a truck driver, was killed in a road accident when she was 1 ½ years old. A while later her mother abandoned her, leaving her in the care of her grandfather in Thirunelveli, a city in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

After the truck crash killed his son, the grandfather began to wonder whether anyone could hear his prayers, school teachers said. As the grandfather sought answers, his daughter — Pari’s aunt — began to tell him about Jesus. She had become an Adventist, and she told him that Jesus always hears prayers.

The grandfather, who lives in a small hut, is 82 years old and has poor eyesight. He also has little money to support his granddaughter. At the recommendation of his Adventist relatives, he agreed to send Pari to study in the fourth grade at the James Memorial Higher Secondary School in Prakasapuram, located about 75 minutes by bus south of their home. The relatives are helping pay for the tuition and other fees.

James Memorial Higher Secondary School is one of five projects in the Adventist Church’s Southern Asia Division that will receive a portion of the Thirteen Sabbath Offering in third quarter 2017. The school is seeking $260,500 to construct a new girls’ dormitory, with about $258,000 of the amount coming from the Thirteen Sabbath Offering and the rest coming from the division and the local conference.

“The current building accommodates 100 girls and is not enough for demand,” the division said in a statement. “The new hostel will strengthen the image of the church in the community and allow increased enrollment.”

A total of $1.03 million from the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will be earmarked for the five projects in India. The other four projects include a girls’ dormitory at an Adventist school in Dimapur, located in eastern India near the Myanmar border; 14 new classrooms for the Adventist school in Vellarda in southern India; 14 new classrooms for the Alate Adventist school in Hathkanangle in western India; and the third floor of the division’s first major conference center, situated in the central city of Ibrahimpatnam.

Pari smiled brightly when asked whether she likes studying at the school. She expressed joy in living in the girls’ dormitory, an aging, dilapidated building where about 100 girls share five showers and five toilets. A portion of the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering for third quarter 2017 will be used to construct a much-needed new girls’ dormitory for Pari and the other girls. The new dormitory will also be bigger, allowing the school to accept more students. The principal said the current dormitory does not have enough room for all the girls who wish to live there.

Pari has seen several students baptized, and she describes the baptisms and her own new love for Jesus when she visits her grandfather during vacations.

“I tell grandfather that he needs to be baptized,” she said.

She said she knows that Jesus hears her prayers for her grandfather and will answer them.

She also knows that the way of Jesus is the way of Parisudha — the way of holiness. “The Lord is my shepherd,” she said. “I shall not want.”