April 28th

April 28th. Our house owner has extended our lease until April 28th. 2 months longer than originally, so that's good. I really would like to stay here until we move into our own home, whenever that may be, but at least in the next 3 months our builder should finished building his own home and he's already offered us the 2nd floor apt til we have our own home. It means an extra move that I didn't want to have to make but I keep telling myself... it's almost the last one.

Land Pictures

A view of the land we put a down payment on a couple weeks ago. The entire cleared area to the boy in the back is ours.
Another view. The house in the background is being built by our school builder for his family. He'll build our house as well.
Another view - E. in the background.
Closer on E. In back of the low gray building in the back center is a main road.
This is interesting. The yellow house in the back right is the house we lived in for many years. I stood on that roof more times than I can remember praying for this land that E. now stands on. At that time there was nothing there and it was covered in bushes and brambles. I had no idea what God had in store... Anyway, we love our old neighbors and the area and we also get the best drinking water in our city!

Phoebe's Baptism

Here are some pictures from Phoebe's* baptism on Christmas Day. (I posted some pictures right after the baptism but they were taken from far away.) I just got my hands on these today.


* Phoebe has lived with me since Sept. Remember she didn't talk... Still talking!

1st Anuual Church Picnic

January 26th was Indian Republic Day AND our church's 1st church picnic. We went to a beach near a river and had a great day. Since it's been forever since I've posted pix I thought you might enjoy these.

Lots and lots of cricket



Little ones punked out...
Moms hid in the shade
Oh the joy of swimming naked...


We played lots of other fun games and shared a wonderful lunch, but I was too busy playing and eating to take pictures silly.

Drug Induced Sleep

I've had a reoccurance or relapse or re-something of what I had a couple months ago when I was so sick. I've been feeling fine but the Doctor seems to be treating me "aggressively" this time. That means that 1 of the 5 pills I'm taking every day seems to knock me out for about 3 hours every afternoon. Flat on the bed, asleep, no movement.

Needless to say, lots of work not getting done. And I have a ton on my plate right now with my English course, our upcoming newsletter and my book, not to mention the daily duties of children, home and husband yada yada yada.

Oh well, just 3 more days of meds to go...

Wednesday Already

What am I doing? It's Wednesday?

Let's see what this week looked like. Oh yeah, I had Chortie over the weekend. She latched on to me and I was on baby duty - that's it. Baby duty.

We took 24 kids to the fair on Sunday night. It was a mob scene, but we thankfully we came home with 24 happy kids, so I guess we were sucessful. I'm not claiming they were all ours ...

Chortie, her dad, me and C. went to the hospital for a check up on her arm Monday. The medical files were supposed to be there, they weren't. Someone picked them up last week. Start search for medical file. Find them. Chortie goes into the doctor's office. Screams and screams some more. The Doctor says she'll need to be sedated (she needed to have a procedure to remove a wire sticking out from her tiny elbow. She broke it over 2 months ago and had surgery in November.) Bring Chortie home with the instructions that she needs to fast. Yes, not eat for 4 hours - over lunch. We're talking about an 18 month old here - who barely at breakfast.

Chortie screams all afternoon because she's hungry. I'm sure she'd lost all faith in adults by this point considering her dad and I had to hold her down in the morning while they took x-rays of her sore little arm - THEN I refused to feed her.

I had my English class at 3:30 so I sent Chortie with the Christy, woman who runs our Children's Home, and her dad for the 3 PM appointment. Good move on my part since Chrortie got admitted in the hospital over night. She now goes for phys. therapy 3 days a week.

Uhhh, birthday party Monday night. Office work yesterday and I was informed by my husband that we need to get a newsletter out and it take priority over everything else. Including the month end tests for our Bible students. (I have to prepare them and make the test like - today.)

Last night our ladies ministry went visiting in a city nearby, we left at 5:30PM and got home at 10:30PM. Comforted a crying C. who was left behind.

Today, still trying to do the Bible College work for me and O., as well as work on the newsletter, but before all that - tomorrow is India's Republic Day. E. is in a program at her school at 7:30 AM, O. & I are in programs at the big school at 7:30 AM and then at 9AM we're supposed to leave for a church picnic.

Ha! I don't think so.

I'm working on getting as much done today as I can...

The Twilight Labyrinth

I guess that most people have their little areas of interest. Civil War, Quilting, Movie Star Gossip, Stock Market, Computers, Star Wars... just some examples from off the top of my head.

When you look at these peoples' bookshelves it's not unusual to find books on these topics or on whatever floats their boats. The favored topic books will often be in the minority, sure, but there probably will be a small line of well read and muchly enjoyed books on one or two (generally related) topics of the readers interest.

I think we all have something that just lights our fires.

Here's a hint to mine. The title of this entry is the title of a book I finished reading this afternoon. The subtitle reads, "Why Does Spiritual Darkness Linger Where It Does?"

Spiritual warfare, that's what does it for me. I have other interests, but the non-fiction books I devour are almost exclusively on the topic of the spiritual realm.

I found this book, written by George Otis Jr., in the notes of another book on this topic that I read several years ago. I asked for this one for Christmas and, as you know by now, mom came through.

Did I like it? Oh yeah. The author spent 7 years (or something) researching for it and there are almost as many notes* at the back of the book as there is info in the chapters.

This book is NOT for the faint of heart and it's not something that I would recommend to a broad audience of people. However, if you're at all like me and passages of scripture like Ephesians 6:12ff are NOT abstract and ARE something that you can wrap your head around, you might want to read this book.

Well researched and presented in a logical order, The Twilight Labyrinth reads like a novel and informs like a textbook.

I'll be absorbing what I've read over the next few days and weeks and I wouldn't be surprised to see future posts on the topic. For now, The Twilight Labyrinth will join it's small but select group of companions on my bookshelf.

*I love notes. Sometimes I just read them on their own.

Newest Addition

Seven.

That's how many kids I'm up to nowadays. Kids that live with me, that is. I got "Chortie" today. She's an almost 2 year old sweetie who lives in our children's home who has temporarily been transfered to my house.

I should stick to older kids. I have a soft spot for little ones and I was just letting her bang on my keyboard - while I was typing. Some things are just not done. My other kids get their lives threatened for less than that.

Land Owners

O. got back from Bombay yesterday afternoon after a whirlwind trip and just like that we got land. It's not all paid for yet but, you know, we're part of the way there.

Someone wrote and said today, "Congratulations, you're land owners." And I thought, oh yeah, we are.

If You Don't Laugh

I was in a meeting today with O. and some other co-workers and they mentioned that the septic tank in the Bible College dorm was full and the downstairs toilet (Indian style) was overflowing. One co-worker kept repeating, "We just had it cleaned out 20 days ago. It should take at least 6 months to fill up again."

Before this meeting we had just finished another meeting about the Bible College with the cook and the "warden" (the man in charge of all the Bible Students). One of the things we talked about was making less food. The 15 (all male) students were eating up a storm.

That conversation combined with the "It should take at least 6 months to fill up again..." comments started me (and I wasn't alone) giggling. O. was saying, "This is serious. I have a lot of tension. What will we do about this? Where will we get the money to keep fixing it..."

I said, "Baby, if you can't laugh about it, you may as well just cry."