Landscaping Work at Coimbatore Chapel

The painting at the church is almost complete, and other workers are busily working on landscaping. The church has a couple of women hired as gardeners that work every day. Several additional workers have been hired to help with the landscaping. They put down some new sod. Yes, folks, this is how they do it. Apparently, this sod is temporary. It will be lifted up and moved to another location in the church yard, but it will look much like it is here. The leave gaps between the pieces of sod, and the pieces grow together. We will be watching to see if it really spreads as rapidly as they have said. If someone put sod down like this back at home, we would probably fire them. One advantage of doing the sod this way is that the cost would be significantly less.

Another job the workers were given was to prune the trees (bushes) that run along the entire length of the church. Brother Ramamoothy gave specific instructions to cut the tops off so the trees were about four feet tall. They would then be rounded on the top and shaped. The idea was that the shorter trees would give a better view of the beauty of the church building. Well, the workers obviously didn't understand the instructions. When Brother Ramamoothy returned in the early evening to look at the work, he saw the trees as you see them here. He was not well pleased. They had hacked off the branches  from the bottom three to three and a half feet of the trees. There wasn't much that could be done to change what they had done. Gluing them back on was not an option. They are going to round the tops a bit, and see what that will look like. If that doesn't look right, we think they may plant new plants.

They chopped off the brances from bottom of these plants, too.











The workers have also been busy digging up grass that was a little on the wild side in other areas. This entire area was dug up by hands. The weather was hot that day, but they kept working in the hot sun. All this grass had been hauled away by the next day.

At the back of the church stands a little building. As we were looking over the landscaping work that was being done, Sister Tiefenbach mentioned that she wondered what the little building was. Elder Tiefenbach informed her that it is a bathroom that was built for the members of the church from the villages to use when they come in for conferences. Apparently, they feel more comfortable using the toilets outside than the ones in the church.

As we were enjoying the outside that day, we saw a few butterflies. This one landed conveniently on the ground and paused long enough for us to take a picture.









This black and white butterfly fluttered around our heads for quite a while. Several times, we thought it was going to hit our heads. It didn't seem to be trying to get away from us.











This is one of the views from the church parking lot. Many houses in Coimbatore have tiled roofs like the partial roof seen here. They are typically small two room houses. We see many houses like this one with collapsed roofs in Coimbatore. The building behind the house is a new building under construction. We see a lot of new construction in Coimbatore.






Three new buildings are being constructed on the street we take to the church. This is the newest building to be started. All the poles are used for bracing in preparation for the cement that will be poured for the upper floors.

We posted a picture of the banyan tree in the back of the church yard a few posts ago, showing that fall comes to Coimbatore. As you can see, not many more leaves have fallen. So far, we have not seen any trees that have lost all their leaves.

We pass several cemeteries on one of the road that we often take. Usually, we see several ambulance/freezer box vehicles, such as this one, parked along the street by the cemeteries. People are buried very quickly here after they day - often the same day or the next day. We are not sure, but we suspect the freezer boxes must be used to help preserve the bodies between death and burial.





Another sight we see often is a group of workers being transported to work.











We simply had to post this picture. We have been wanting to take a picture of this for a long time. This is a barber shop that is about half a block from the new building with all the bracing we showed above. We are sure the owner wanted a sign that read "salon."











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Two weeks ago, Second Branch had its Primary Presentation. This week, First Branch had theirs. The children sang exceptionally well. Sister Tiefenbach was very pleased with them. The primary presidency went to a lot of work to make sure the children were dressed the same. All the girls looked beautiful in their white dresses. Only two nursery aged girls did not have white dresses. No one bought new clothes; they already had white dresses. The primary presidency provided the purple accessories. We are particularly impressed with two of the girls because they do not speak English, but they memorized all the songs. We are sure they will learn English quickly because the other children speak it very well.

Today, we were also able to get a picture of Brother Raja, Sister Sumathi, and their children. They are in First Branch. Their son goes to a boarding school, and he is only allowed to go home one weekend per month, so we don't have an opportunity to get a picture of the family together very often. These are the girls who do not speak English.

This week, we said good-bye to Elder Racharla, as he returned home after serving an honorable two year mission. He flew out Wednesday morning. We had him, Elder Ram, and Elder Vaipei over for pizza on Monday (P-day). Elder Racharla was excited about the pizza - maybe because he helped make some of them. Because it was P-day (preparation day), the elders were able to stay for quite a while at our apartment. We had a wonderful visit with them. We wish the best for Elder Racharla as he returns home. He was a good, dedicated missionary. We will miss him.