Rehoboth is a great institution: started by a great missionary-statesman and nurtured by equally great and committed visionaries. Miss Treasure, the in charge when I visited Rehoboth for the first time, is the last one of these as I write this memoir.

She has already devoted more than five decades of her life to Rehoboth. Only insiders know the investment thus made and the results that are seen. That is why Rehoboth is not merely an orphanage, but rather a very large family. A family made up of a large number of people from all walks of life. One has to be part of it to know of it.

I was fortunate to become part of it when I entered Rehoboth, and that feeling continues even today. The first person I met is Ammu, the personal butler attached to Miss Treasure. Her caring spirit always amazed me during and also after my residence in the campus. During a few weeks when we did not have a lady-warden Ammu used to come and sleep in the girls hostel. That gave me a lot of confidence that the girls were not alone at night.

Elizabeth Wilson, known to all of us as Pearly, is another special person from Rehoboth.

Basically a very bright girl, she had some problems with her studies and that is when Miss Treasure introduced her to me. That introduction made us very close to each other. She is studying in Australia as I write this memoir, but our relation as father-daughter has kept us in touch with each other.

Miss Treasure has a protocol that any child brought to Rehoboth should sooner or later be prayed for by one of the Brethren who visit Rehoboth. One day when I visited her during our regular meeting and discussion, she brought an infant who was hardly two weeks old and asked me if I would pray for her. Of course, that would always be a privilege and I prayed for her.

She than asked me if I would like to name the child. I said yes, and promptly named her as Asha after my daughter Asha. On reaching home I mentioned it to my wife and children and they were thrilled. Asha asked me to give her our family name too, and thus the child was called Asha C. Philip.

Pic: Johnson, Asha C. Philip and Miss Treasure in October 2010 at the RTI Campus

Asha C. Philip, or Asha Junior as we call her, turned out to be a very bright child. At present she is a student of Rehoboth International School. During vacations she is brought to Ernakulam to spend a few days with us. We are confident and we pray that Asha junior might become a committed believer and also a very learned person.

Santosh and Keith are to young men who also became special to me. It happened one day when my cousin Abraham Thomas (Kochi) and I were visiting with Miss Treasure. Abraham Thomas was a faculty member of RTI and had been a great help to us in many things. During our conversation Miss Treasure mentioned that there are two young boys who greatly desire to be brought up in a family somewhere in Kerala.

Pic: Abraham Thomas (Kochi) and I have shared a lot of time for ministry with each other in the last two decades

As Miss Treasure went out for some work, AT asked my opinion about taking them under his family’s  care. I endorsed it. He immediately called his elder brother who agreed to take them into the family. He then communicated this to Miss Treasure who was very happy.

By next week their bag and baggage was ready and the two boys came with me to Ernakulam from where they were taken to Ennekkattu (Kumbanad, Kerala) where they were schooled.

Today both Santosh and Keith are on their own now, having completed their schooling, but they continue to be a part of my family. Rehoboth has been a great living experience of the heavenly family where we all shall live together. [To Continue…]

 

 

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