Work While You May

Our work days always begin with a walk in the park. We arise at 5:58 a.m. every work day and get out the door between 6:15 and 6:20 to begin our walk. We know we have shown pictures of the park that we walk in several times in the past, but here is another one. The park is about a 5 to 7 minute walk from our apartment. The mornings are cooler than they used to be, but we always manage to work up a sweat.











While on our walk before our work at the office one day this past week, we noticed an ant hill that was built up around the base of a tree. At that early time of the morning, the ants were already busily engaged in their work for the day. They were scurrying every which way as they hurried here and there.







On our walk to the park and back to our apartment in the early hours of the morning, we always see people busily engaged in their work. Here is a man getting this tiny store ready for the day by stocking the shelves with milk. Whenever we go by this milk store and when it is open, we always buy 2 half litres of milk - one pink one and one blue one. The pink one is for girls, and the blue one is for boys. Actually, the pink one is skim milk and the blue one is full fat milk. We each carry one of the boxes of milk on our way back to the apartment. The store isn't always open when we finish our walk, but it has become a bit of a routine for us to check to see if the store is open and then buy milk.


Another sight we look for when we walk home from the park is this man walking some dogs. We think that this must be his work. He could, however, be the owner of the three dogs. We hadn't seen him for several weeks, but we began seeing him with the three dogs this past week. We aren't sure how much of a walk the dogs actually get because whenever we see the man, he is stopped and is talking to someone. Nevertheless, we love to look for the Dalmatian dog.



No matter how long we have been in India, we continue to be amazed that we see coconut trees on a regular basis. We see many different kinds of coconuts, at least they look different to us. Climbing up this tree to harvest these coconuts must be a lot of work. Maybe, it is a fun job for someone. This week, we saw a woman busily working at cracking open some coconuts. She stopped for a few minutes as we walked by so we wouldn't get wet from the water that was splashing out of them when she cracked them open.

Another group of people that we see busy at work early in the morning is made up of car washers. Many people hire young men to wash their cars every morning. They wash the outside and clean the inside. We rarely see dirty cars in India. This man washes the cars of the owner of the house where we live, as well as some of the neighbours' cars. Hmm..... how much would someone in Canada have to pay to hire someone to hand wash his/her car everyday.




This empty property was recently occupied by a beautiful large house just around the corner from us. It is now empty, except for a bit of remaining rubble. Cleaning up after the demolition of a house is a LOT of work. But, the people work steadily at it, removing the rubble by hand until it is finished. The workers fill small bowl shaped containers with the rubble, put the container on their heads, and walk it over to the trailer that is pulled by a John Deere tractor. (We thought of our friend Greg when we saw the tractor.) Then, other workers come to begin building a new structure. The same labour intensive work is involved in building the new building. We wonder if this will be the site of a new apartment building, or if it will simply be another house. Mind you, many of the houses in this area are several stories high and most of them have apartments on some of the levels.

 Doing dishes in India is a more labour intensive work than back home. We, however, are blessed to have hot running water in the kitchen in our Bangalore apartment. Our apartment in Coimbatore does not have hot water in the kitchen; we haul it from one of the bathrooms to the kitchen. We love our dishwasher back home. Our sinks in Bangalore don't have plugs in them, so we must use basins. Again, we are blessed in Bangalore to have a double sink.




While engaged in the work of doing dishes one night this past week, we noticed the beautiful full moon that shone through our kitchen window. The clouds that surrounded the moon have a wonderful effect, colouring the clouds with shades of brown, orange, blue/grey. It was a wonderful sight. We often have wonderful sights to see out our kitchen window.






Our week, as usual, was filled with a lot of work. Friday, in particular, was filled with a lot of work. It was President Berrett's birthday, so we surprised him with a birthday cake. Did we say the day was filled with a lot of work???? Okay, maybe Friday was a bit more relaxing. Sister Tiefenbach, however, worked hard the night before to make the cake. We heard that Friday was the President's birthday only at the end of the day on Thursday.





Sister Smith added her artistic work to the cake. Sister Tiefenbach, who is NOT artistic, added the sprinkles all around the cake. In the end, we had a great looking cake for President Berrett's birthday. If you look closely at the cake, you may see some tiny holes in the cake. For example if you look just above the "y," you can see a hole. We will explain.








While looking carefully at the cake, President Berrett asked if this cake was a used cake. We were a bit puzzled by his comment. He then said that it looked like we had candles on it for someone else and that person must not have liked it so we used it for him. You can see Sister Tiefenbach laughing at that suggestion because she knew that the holes in the cake were the result of the toothpicks she had put in the cake to hold up the saran wrap so it wouldn't touch the icing. She was concerned that he might see the holes and wonder about it.



 Everyone enjoyed the break from our office work. We invited the people at the distribution center and the people who work upstairs in finances, membership records, and physical facilities. In the background of this picture are Elder Ramaraj (left) and Brother John. Brother John is a new employee for the church. He has taken over Brother Prem's position working with membership records. The cake disappeared quickly. President Berrett must have liked the cake because he had two  pieces, AND he cleaned out the left over crumbs and icing left in the pan. Sister Tiefenbach suggested that someone do that so it would be easier to clean.


Work was not absent from our little cake break. Sister Berrett and Sister Smith took the opportunity to talk about some mission work.

Shortly after we finished the cake, Elders Higgins (left) and Hodgson came back from the FRRO (Elder Hodgson had to register in Bangalore) and presented President Berrett with a banana float cake. It is a frozen dessert. We certainly had our cake and ate it, too that day! Elder Hodgson and Elder Higgins bought an interesting candle.

You light the center of this candle, and then this lights the inner candles. Then the lotus flower opens up and displaying all the candles. All the time, it is playing "Happy Birthday." It was cute for the first 20 seconds, but we became tired of the song very quickly. Elder Ramaraj dismantled the music, and President Berrett was grateful. We have such a fun time at the office . . . . er, we mean that we have so much work to do at the office!

Shortly after the birthday celebrations, we had to get back to work by going to our apartment and pack for Coimbatore. We found out just before noon that we needed to go to Coimbatore to do some more work on our 2nd visa renewal application. The police department was ready to do the police check for us, so we had to book a flight for Coimbatore for that evening. We arrived at Coimbatore shortly after 7:00 p.m. Our airplane was very early arriving, so we had to wait a short time for Augustine to pick us up.



Our work at the police station took about 10 minutes. We will need to go to the FRO early next week, and then we will still have more work to do before the visa renewal application process is done. The work of renewing a visa is very time consuming.








We have other work to do in Coimbatore, as well. We are assessing one of the missionary apartments. We will determine whether or not the missionaries should continue to live in a particular apartment or whether we should look for a new apartment. The bathrooms in this particular apartment need some work to make them look nicer. We will see if some acid will remove the scaling from the bathroom floor.  We will also travel to Erode on Monday to do a routine apartment inspection.




On our way to the church in Coimbatore on Saturday night, we met Sister Alice. We don't know who was more surprised, her or us. We were on our way to be with the members as many members attend institute on Saturday evening.









As we walked to the church, we stopped to look at an apartment building that was under construction for many months. We would often stop to watch as the workers passed bricks one by one in a human chain up to the top story of the building and as they hauled sand in small containers perched on their heads. We always marveled at the labour intensive work involved in constructing this apartment building. It now looks complete, ready for people to move in.

Our Sunday work in Coimbatore always involves attending both branches. We arrived shortly after 9:30 a.m. and return to our apartment after 6:30 p.m. After the second set of meetings, we attended a baptism. Following the baptism, we went to Sister Dhikao's (left front) and Sister Peddinti's (beside her) apartment to check out a malfunctioning door handle. We definitely are not on a holiday when we are in Coimbatore. We end up finding work that must be done while we are here.

We have been hard at work this week, just as you have been. As we think about work, we think about the Lord's great work. We once lived with our Heavenly Father as His spirit children. He created this earth for us because he loves and wants us to return to him. He has revealed to us that "This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). Wadsworth has captured this truth in his epic poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" when he says: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"

We come to earth in trailing clouds of glory. Just as Our Father in Heaven has a great work, we also have a great work. The Lord revealed this great work to the Prophet Joseph Smith when He said, "Behold, this is your work, to keep my commandments, yea, with all your might, mind, and strength" (D&C 11:20).