hey, everybody i am going to try to keep up with our blog myself. I took 6 tries to get the first picture and tiny paragraph done. Not a lot of things to write the past two weeks. We were mostly stuck in the apt-most of you know that two sundays ago we came home from church to find that the ceiling in the guest bedroom had fallen off and broke all over the room and down the hall. It was 1/8-1 inch thick cement - very heavy-if we had been in that bed we would not be here to tell the tale. Our landlord was very sick (physically!) from this--he couldn't get out of bed for two days it upset him so much. He lives there with his wife and daughter, two married sons and their children also, and one of the original contractors also live there-they worried that this could happen throughout the building-which is only 2 years old. He said they paid extra money to build the building with better materials since it was the family home. We had an independent engineer come (and they had one also). Both engineers felt the other bedroom ceiling could fall also. We had to decide to move or stay and let the bedrooms get repaired. It is soo much work to find a new place, a safe place, decent place, close to church, etc..we like the Muslim owners and they have always been very kind so we chose to stay. They moved us into an adj. apt-so we lived in one, slept in the other (the safest place was to sleep directly under where the ceiling had already fallen). The landlord asked us to stay and watch our belongings during the construction. That put me there 24/7 for over a week. To get all this done in a week is a true miracle in India!!! the owners were in/out of the apt constantly making sure things were done correctly-if not they made the workers start over. Afterwards they said they wised they had done all the ceilings this way-put up false ceilings with sheetrock. Plus we got new paint jobs in the bedrooms-everything got repainted. I was worried how we were going to be unable to help people with employment for so long. Well...that kind of took care of itself also. During this whole time, the internet service was down at the church house. The service center, jack, and SLC worked on it everyday but no success. The minute that the apt was completed and the painters were leaving, jack called from the office and said the internet was working all of a sudden-still do not really know what went wrong there and what worked to fix it!
Yesterday, jack was asked to "bless" a home for a part-member family. She got an "auto" and picked us up at the church house. We rode out into the unknown part of the city-and stopped along the way at one of the roadside stands (where we really shouldn't be eating-for lack of cleanliness :) and tried rice pancakes for breakfast-yum, NO--but...the warm coconut/almond milk is very good. Got to her place and first visited in the neighbor's home, then blessed Sister Chandra's house, then went back to the neighbor's for watermelon (tradition is that on a 1st visit you must get a treat). then we got the auto and rode back to the church. It was an interesting morning. Good experience.