Firefly Alights at the Malsteads

Ponies dominate the Malstead hobby farm.  Greg teases me that I am a "pony snob, as I have waxed long and eloquent arguments why we should have larger four legged beasts. It just so happens that all our Leg Up rescues to date have been ponies.  I actually bought Shadow, so he is our only horse.  And he is a small horse, just 14 hands.   All the kids are outgrowing the ponies, as our three girls are already as tall as I am.  Well, Abbi is almost as tall as me. 

Ponies are perfect for the disabled riders, being small, they are less intimidating,   They are great for the rescued girls, for the same reasons.  But for horse lovers who really enjoy riding,  horses are best. Rachael, our second daughter, has proven over the years her talent and affinity for horses.

When Leg Up volunteers are scarce its Rachael and Abbi who step up and do the feeding, the mucking and the watering, the training, and the exercising.  Of course I flit and float, filling in the gaps when they are busy at school, but then getting distracted by other things, I constantly move onto more pressing projects and the idea of the hour.  So, I have relied on them, we all have, to do the constant daily chores.  Four legged beasts are no joke.  The work they create is ever- evolving. 

Rachael and I weren't the only ones who longed for something bigger.  Leg Up volunteers expressed the same hope.  "Can't we rescue something bigger?"  Maybe its on the same scale as climbing larger and larger mountains.  We humans always want more challenge.  Life should never be easy, right?

And so, the long awaited day came.  Rachael, Abbi, Pete and Kristin (Leg Up volunteers), our Freedom Firm driver, Susi, and a local Ooty horse agent and I, traveled down to Coimbatore (a city three hours away).  Threading our way through the sprawling city, and out again into the parched countryside, we traveled out to a horse farm. 

Tied to a tree with half a dozen Tamil children hanging around him, stood a cappuccino colored colt.  Already 15 hands high, he was still only 18 months old. Check, we wanted something big.  A pure Marwari (an ancient Indian breed traditionally used for war), his perfectly tipped ears swiveled inward, the tips touching perfectly.  Check, we wanted a Marwari.

"No riding, mam," the owner stated, meaning he was unbroken.  Cross, no way, I don't want something this wild.  Can Rachael really break a horse from scratch?

Rachael was already standing on the log in front of him.  He was snaking his head back and forth at the children around him, ears flat back , teeth snapping.  Cross,  he is vicious.  That quality wasn't on the most wanted list.  We had clearly specified beforehand he had to be gentle. 

The owner untied the lead rope and dragged him by a collar around his neck a few paces from us.  He plunged around bucking and rearing.  We gasped, he was truly a beautiful specimen.  This was no rescue operation.  Unless rescuing him from a potential future of starving and beating and breaking with spiked bits count as rescue.  Check.  We always dreamed of something really gorgeous.  He was far more "horse" than we have ever had in the last 5 years.  He made my Shadow look like a nag.

I looked back at Rachael.  She was very quiet, watching him intently.  Oh no, she is falling for him.  They tied him back to the tree.  Rachael and Abbi persisted in attempting to touch his nose.  Ears pricked forward (finally), and he began exploring their hands with his mouth.  Nibbling them but not biting.  Suddenly the fear died in his eyes and he was all curiosity, nosing, tasting, touching them.  I doubt anyone had interacted that way with him before.  A slight movement of their hands towards his ears, and he would snap forward, ears plastered back, teeth barred.  His eyes blinked spasmodically as he shied away expecting to be hit.

"Mom, I like him.  I really like him."  Oh Rach, I don't know, how can we manage him.  What if he doesn't calm down, what if he hurts someone.  Fears flooded my mind.  Pete and Kristen were as enraptured as Rachael. 

I forced everyone to leave, and we drove an hour away where two paint mares were tied at a factory site.  Just two years old (we checked the teeth) they looked like they were already thirty and had lived lives of hardship and pain.  Abbi joked that they were cows, not horses.   They paled in comparison to the cappuccino colored colt.  Lets go back.

On the way, we negotiated the price with the owner on the phone.  He dropped his asking price by a couple hundred dollars.  We were pleased.  At the same time I felt we needed to do more shopping, needed to be sure.  So, we decided to look at another horse back in Ooty.  But I could tell Rachael's heart was set, and that nothing else would do. 

On the way home she named him Firefly.  Apt, there is a whole lot of fire in this horse.  Back in Ooty, we checked out another 18 month Marwari.  Again, Firefly came out on top, by a long shot.  We made a final decision and called the owner again.    Although we had settled on a price, the owner wiggled and bartered, argued and cajoled, said he had another buyer, etc etc, and in the end we had to pay a bit more, but it wasn't too bad.  We went through several tense days before we reached an agreement.

Pete was the hero, and traveled, with the agent back down to Coimbatore in an open pickup truck to collect Firefly.  He sat in the driving rain all the way back to OotyMarwari, Firefly.

Rachael's quiet joy (because Rachael is quiet) shines out, radiant, assured, confident that she can tame this beast.  A month has gone by.  She is using the Parelli technique of training.  He is dead smart and learns the games easily.  He has stopped attacking all the other ponies, and knows his place in the pecking order now.

He ran away with Shadow the first night after he arrived.  Greg found him in the forest 7 km away from us, abandoned by Shadow, completely lost and bewildered.  Greg said he was just a big baby and stood there waiting to be caught.  He stood, head in Greg's arms, for an hour in the pouring rain while they waited for reinforcements, in the form of Kavi and her friends.

He no longer lunges at us with his ears back and flails at us with his hooves.  Slowly, slowly he is relaxing, realizing we aren't going to hurt him.  He is changing, gentling, trusting.  He has soul-bonded with Rachael, and completely adores her. 

These days are the kid's summer vacations, and Rachael spends hours a day with him.  Brushing, bathing, trying to desensitize him, leading him on walks for succulent grass.  We have many months before training him for riding, so there is lots of time for the relationship to grow and strengthen.  As I watch them, my own teen age years spent with horses flashes before me, and I am thrilled that my daughter can have this joy too.

Our horses and yes, ponies, have another purpose besides our own great delight.  And while there is no guilt at all associated with having them purely for our own pleasure and benefit, they are there for therapy for our rescued girls and for local disabled children as well.  See http://www.legupindia.org/

Our horses, ponies and rescued girls will soon feature in a documentary by Ben Stamper.  Check out this project to be filmed in September! 

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New Growth

In an unprecedented decision, Greg and I travelled for 5 weeks across the United States, sharing the Freedom Firm story.  This entailed leaving our four kids behind in the middle of their school term with good friends of ours.   As we travelled from Georgia to New York and Pennsylvania to Kentucky, we saw winter thaw and spring arrive. Grey trees glimmered with the faintest hint of green, and crocuses and daffodils lifted their heads from the damp earth.

Freedom Firm too is entering a season of new growth.  We needed new partners, new churches and new volunteers.  Everywhere we went we found the issue of sex trafficking was already on people's hearts and minds, and many were eager to hear the first hand accounts. Churches and individuals rallied around us and eagerly sought ways to volunteer and help Freedom Firm.  Spring has arrived for Freedom Firm.

We've come back to India, profoundly encouraged and affirmed. We have a growing network of people with deep expertise dedicated to furthering the work of Freedom Firm. The fight to free girls is a massive one, and it requires thousands of people willing to get involved. We are getting there.

Today I am sitting in my garden, with the children back at school, with a day, finally, to write.

Its summer now in Ooty, with a constant breeze rolling through the mountains and temperatures in the mid-seventies. Our garden, in miraculous leaps and bounds is blossoming in a profusion of colors and scents. Foxgloves, Bachelor buttons, Daisies and Sweet William take the edge off our wilderness and give us a bit of the “English Cottage” look, and suddenly we feel a little civilized. Kavi brought six friends for a sleep over and they played croquette on the lawn. Now that is civilized.

But, lest we get too comfortable, wild bison jumped our stone wall and planted their enormous hooves everywhere in our organic vegetable garden, and, with amazing discretion, ate my entire crop of carrots and peas, and left the garlic, lettuce and cilantro. I guess I should be grateful they left something behind. We woke to the sound of our dogs barking at 2 am and with the help of flood lights spied an enormous bison calmly grazing our lawn just feet from our house. We've had a week of putting in higher fences (made out of branches), hoping to keep them out.

As we arrived back in Ooty, the children started their half-term break. We had a great week of catching up with them after the five weeks of separation. Watching new movies we picked up in the States, eating lots of candy I brought back and taking a couple days by a pool down “on the plains,” was the perfect re-entry to life here. Now, back to work.

My first blog I mentioned how I was grinding to a halt. That I couldn't really “do” anything more for Freedom Firm. I wasn't sure I wanted to. I had no energy left, and hardly the will to stay here any longer. All I really knew was that I needed to rest.

“Rest” to me meant changing my activities, radically. I gardened fanatically, and taught a lot at Hebron school. I ignored most of my old responsibilities. I rode Shadow deep into the forest for hours at a time. Often I sat and read books or journalled in front of a fire in by my bedroom hearth.

Slowly, the changes began.  At first, there was a barely perceptible lifting of my spirits. Then, faint glimmers of joy at small things: making a new recipe in the kitchen, a joke from one of the kids around the dinner table, the stumbling efforts of the kindergarteners I taught at Hebron, the sound of birds in the garden, and bees sipping nectar from our flowers. Perhaps its these small things that make up life. Small moments of beauty that I was rushing by.

Greg and I learned new ways of speaking together, and he took my old job of directing Aftercare of the girls. I had secret smiles of triumph when he came back after a long day on the job and sat staring in silence for several minuites before saying, “ I think I know a little of what you must have felt all these years.”

Most profound is the spiritual change that has rolled over me like sweet and living water, as I have extracted myself from ministry. While I intellectually understood the concept of grace since my childhood, I have never lived it. My life was a constant battleground of grace vs. works.

Here is an excerpt from my diary in October that charts my revolution.

“I am more and more convinced I have only just now understood the truth of Christ in my heart, soul and emotions. ... my life was a struggle to align myself with the confusion of ideas presented in the Bible. Nothing ever seemed clear to me (about the way to Heaven) and so I latched on to something I thought I could do: care for the widow and the oppressed, those in bondage and the broken hearted.

I did my best and gave my all for the dream of being justified, the dream of living out a part of the Scripture (See Isaiah 58, my motto).  My core belief was that no matter what I did, I wasn't good enough. I know now that my efforts cannot save me, rather, they have almost destroyed me. It is only Christ. It is He who justifies.

Trying to reach the unattainable. Always striving, never reaching. . This has broken me. I believe now, that God takes me as I am. I hope God resurrects a new person, born of a new and true paradigm.

So, at age 40, the faith of my fathers has finally become my own faith. My birthday is April 24^th, and I will be celebrating Easter Sunday this year with deep gratitude for His Resurrection and, consequently, my own.  

Malstead Kid's Creative Cookies


  

The end of January 2011. The children are still home on their holiday break and will return to school early Feb. So days are full of keeping them occupied, sometimes productive and always well fed. Of course at this stage, they think up a lot of their own ideas.



 watercolor by Kavi

 Bake Sale

Rachael and Kavi, along with their two good friends, Jack and Emily, did a total of three bake sales in front of Modern Store, (our local friendly grocer in Ooty). Not for a “good” cause. Except for Rachael, who is saving up for a horse.  (She says " any donations are welcome!")  

Eight hours of baking resulted in delicious scones, muffins, chocolate cake, cookies and other treats. Jack did the spreadsheet and figured out how much the ingredients of each item cost, and how much they should charge and finally how much profit they made. The whole endeavor was an entrepreneurial experiment, which they enjoyed immensely.

                                                                                                         
                                                                                   
They met hundreds of people, both local and tourist, Indians and foreigners. Many stayed to chat as they munched their goods. “Hey, what are you white kids doing selling cookies?” one New Zealander wanted to know. Another tourist took a bite of their cheese muffins and threw it away in front of them. Market research. A teacher complained about their high prices. Some came, bought, went away and came back for more. Over all? A success. They actually made money, and had a blast doing it.

It was good to see the kids emerge from the sanctity and shelter of Hebron school, and mix and mingle with the crowds of people streaming toward the botanical gardens. The community holds so much variety and color. Its easy to live segregated in Hebron school, safe and a little bored. But venturing out into town and offering something for sale, actually makes them a part of the local community, not just a “white kid visiting.”

Greg and I were musing about the beauty of the small town. We don't know. Maybe our kids could do the same experiment in front of Kroger in Peachtree City, Atlanta. I doubt it. And yet here, our local grocery store welcomed the kids, and even took a bit of pride in the bake stand outside their front door. We could just let them run with their idea and encourage their creativity and hard work. It it good to feel at home.

Kavi's Art

Last term in school Kavi produced some good water colors. I'll be sending the pictures to a company to get them made into greeting cards.



more watercolor



a mixed media, ink, bleach, water color and glue





We also painted her room together.    Blue ragged over white. It looks like clouds on a summer day. Kavi, our artist.

Morgan's Power Points

Morgan is discovering technology a rapid rate right now. Strolling around the house in a newly acquired mohawk (compliments of his dad), with earphones hooked up to his PSP, he went through a craze of making power points on every person in the family.                                                   

Where is Abbi these days?

Usually, she is helping me in the kitchen or reading books in her bedroom. She and Rachael do a lot of riding.  Naturally neat and tidy, she helps to organize and label my storage and cupboards, which is a huge improvement in my somewhat relaxed housekeeping.