It remains from Christmas to eastern and gives them a very friendly and beautiful look. During worship service, women are sitting on the carpets in front. The altar and chancel are still the old ones of the days when the Mission started here.

On every visit we received loads of flowers, probably to make us look a little more colourful ;-).

Of course we wanted to see also the old missionary-buildings.

This one is from Koraput and its the place where my great-grandfather and great-grandmother lived for 2 years. Nowadays its the office of the Christian organisation of the Adivasis (the indigenous population of this region).

The one beneath is in Kotpad. It is not in use any more. My great-grandpa was doing his first service here as an substitute of an other missioner. The congregation has plans to host a technical research institute here in the future. It would at least preserve the buildings.

The sign above you can find on almost every school in the region. We visited a few, but the most emotional visit was here in Kotpad. There is a highschool, a middle school and a primary school. The last one has to fight for its surviving, cause there are not enough funding to maintain it. As you see in the pictures, the buildings are not really in a good condition and the teachers told us, they have to wait months for their salaries from the Indian government.

Its a hard thing to know, that these cute kids probably cant go to school any more in future days. I mean kids are the future of this country and good education for the next generation can help this poor region to develop better.

We often were shown to the graveyards, where still some tombs of former missioners can be seen. This one impressed me a lot. Its covered by mango-trees. Imagine the trees with flowers and fruits - a magic place.

Above you see me with the former head of Kotpad high school Mr Danphul. We had a very interesting talk about education and the actual situation in JELC (Jeypore Evangelical Lutheran Church).

Finally we still made it to visit the widow-ashram in Kotpad. Here you see us with our presents we got from that nice ladies - I love this picture.