History

The founder of Bethania Kids was Dayavu Dhanapal, the child of Christian parents who were led into the faith by the family of Dr. Ida Scudder. The missionary movement that brought the gospel to India began with Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, a German Lutheran, who arrived at the Danish trade establishment of Tranquebar, South India, on July 9, 1706. The missionary movement grew in India throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries through the work of missionaries from many northern European countries. Born in India, Ida Scudder was a granddaughter of the first American medical missionary, Dr. John Scudder, who worked in India in the late 19^th century with his seven sons.  In 1918, Dr. Ida Scudder founded the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, which by the mid 20^th century had become one of the most successful medical educational institutions and hospitals in all of Asia.

Dayavu Dhanapal grew up in the Palani Hills of South India in a household which, through the influence of the Scudder family, became fervent in the Christian faith. Dayavu learned impeccable English and actually knew Handel’s Messiah better than most Americans. She and ten brothers and sisters were all teachers of Tamil to missionaries in South India for many decades. Her home town of Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, is a hill station about 6,000 feet above the plains, where a school for the children of Christian missionaries was founded in 1901. It was first called High Clerc, and until 1972 the school was commonly known simply as Kodai School.   

 

To this school, in the mid 1950s, Al and Polly Hennig were called to teaching positions. A few years later, Bob and Ruth Granner also arrived as missionary teachers. Dayavu Dhanapal was a charismatic Christian with an inspiring devotional life. She also taught beginning Tamil to the missionaries who showed interest. Without knowing each other very well, the Hennigs and the Granners became good friends of Dayavu and her husband, David. Since this mountain school was indeed established for the children of missionaries, quite a few generations of attendees and graduates of the school (called Kodai grads) were immersed from a very young age in the missionary culture of India. The parents of these children served as teachers at the school and also as missionaries on the plains.

In addition to the Church of South India, numerous Protestant denominations alongside a Roman Catholic convent school and a Jesuit monastery flourished in the small community of Kodaikanal.  Many of the missionaries’ children spent their most formative years in a cultural milieu formed by the convergence of many countries, ethnic backgrounds, languages and Christian denominations…and all against the backdrop of the poverty and beauty of India. The missionary children were often cared for by ‘ayahs’ (maid or servant) and surrounded daily in the community by poor Indian children. Through these culturally unique circumstances, compassion for poverty was a natural development and the seeds of an enduring children’s ministry were being planted in the hearts of all.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Dayavu Dhanapal was engaged in aiding lepers, girls caught in prostitution and families with hardly the means to care for their children. Naturally, members of Kodai School helped her, and some families formed a very close relationship with the Dhanapals. Then, in 1972, when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister of India, Christian missionaries were no longer granted visas, and the school for missionary children in Kodai became Kodaikanal International School. Many of the missionary families returned to their home countries around this time. So it was that the Hennigs moved back to the U.S. and settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the Granners in Mundelein, Illinois. In the late 1970s the Dhanapals actually moved to the United States for four years and lived with the Granner family. During this time, the informal ministry to poor families of Kodaikanal was still on-going through the connections of Dayavu. It was a family culture! David Granner, son of Bob and Ruth, remembers collecting money in a coffee can at high school National Honor Society gatherings to give to Dayavu, that she might be able to help one more child.

A few years later, in the mid 1980s, a woman by the name of Esther Biedermann gave a small inheritance for the support of the ministry of Dayavu Dhanapal, using Al and Polly Hennig as trustees of that gift. Dayavu had already spoken at numerous churches and was a very effective communicator. She would stand in front of a group…an imposing 5 foot in height…and clap her hands together, saying, “Totrum!!! Say, after me!”    …  “Totrum!” (Which means, ‘God be praised!’) The crowd would immediately obey.  Many of these first people exposed to Dayavu are Bethania supporters to this day. In 1987, at Dayavu’s hintings and encouragements, the Hennigs and the Granners decided to found a formal ministry. When asked what it should be called, Dayavu answered immediately, “It will be called Bethania!” This is the Tamilian word for Bethany, a place of healing.

So, a group of people with contrasting gifts were called together to form the founding board of the ministry, which was initially called The Bethania Foundation. This is still our legal name and we were registered by Gene Hennig as a 501(c)3 and domiciled in the state of Minnesota. The founders of The Bethania Foundation are Dayavu Dhanapal and her daughter, Priscilla, Al and Polly Hennig, (teachers), Bob Granner (teacher), Gene Hennig (attorney), his wife, Kristie (writer cum pastor), David Granner (business man), his wife Marilyn (nurse), and Dr. John Wise (agricultural researcher). Quite a lot of educational backgrounds were brought together to help Bethania have a fair chance of negotiating the complex processes involved in starting a ministry. 

Over the years faithful leaders and servants joined our ranks. Ravi Srinivasan, Todd Heidelberger, Don and Carol Hart, Chas and Karen Moeller, Alan Lull and many, many others led trips to India, recruited supporters, wrote articles, spoke publicly, developed programs, promoted campaigns and contributed generously, each out of the kindness of his or her heart. Bethania Kids is hundreds of people in multiple countries being touched to reach out with Christ’s love to destitute children. Ours has been a ministry of many faithful people, not of only a few!

The first Bethania Kids child was named Suzanna Pandi, a victim of polio. Soon a small home was established in a rented building in the town of Kannivadi, at the foot of the Palani Hills. About 9 children — orphans, semi-orphans, abused or abandoned children, along with one care-taker, made up the first home.  On May 8^th, 1988, David and Marilyn Granner arrived into New Dehli at 5 am on their first wedding anniversary, with $11,000 in their money belts to provide the seed money for the first building of our own in Kannivadi. These funds were raised through contributions from the members of the founding families’ churches at $20 or $50 per gift.

Bethania did not hire a single staff person in the United States for 20 years. Krisitie Hennig wrote and edited many early newsletters. Gene Hennig continued to cover our legal requirements. David Granner entered names on spreadsheets and started to organize a systematic approach to raising funds. Al Hennig served as Treasurer, Polly as Secretary. We conducted our administrative meetings during actual board meetings. The board did all the work for the first 20 years. Soon after the first children’s home was established, we started our first Care Center for poor children in Kodaikanal, followed by many others. Then a girls’ home in Nagercoil was founded in 1996. Soon another home in Injam Bakkam, Chennai, was started. Also, a center for children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities was founded in Kodaikanal, then a boys’ home in Andhra Pradesh.

When the tsunami happened in 2004, we had a crisis of faith. We were a small ministry of about 300 children at the time. Yet, we had been engaged in children’s ministry along the coast of Tamil Nadu for 17 years. On Christmas morning of 2004, 500,000 people were killed along the coast of the Bay of Bengal in one of the largest natural disasters in history. A total of 800,000 homes in India alone were destroyed, displacing millions of people. Tens of thousands of children were orphaned or rendered homeless, and many cases of exploitation of children came to our attention. We immediately took in hundreds of children and formed four new Bethania Kids homes. We soon were caring for in excess of 1,000 children.  Since that date in 2004, we have been working to improve the quality and stability of our ministry. Because of a need to ramp up the scale of the ministry, we hired staff in the U.S. and established the Bethania Kids Advisory Board to recruit leaders who could contribute work, wealth and wisdom to our ministry.

All of the founders of Bethania Kids admit that they were guided more by the mistakes they made along the way than by the wisdom they gleaned from their vast and varied experience or education. David Granner writes, “Perhaps it just comes back to a genuine love for the poor children that has sustained our passion for 30 years. We’ve gone through some hard times and we’ve prayed, laughed, cried, fought and prayed some more. In the end, the ministry itself…’nurturing and equipping children to change their own world through the love of Jesus’ is such a grand and worthwhile calling! The children themselves, the hundreds and hundreds of transformed lives…this is what keeps us going.”

— David Granner (November 2016)