Busy, Busy Week

We are getting desperate for titles for our blogs. But, this title does reflect our week, although it may not differentiate it from other busy weeks. We are much busier than when we first arrived. We prefer to be busy. We have finally had rain. It rained Tuesday evening, Saturday evening, and again this evening (Sunday). Although we have had some rain, the temperature doesn't seem to have cooled off. The days are still quite sunny, hot, and humid. Today, we saw billowing clouds forming, and we wondered if we would have rain.

The thunderstorm and the rain began a bit before 5:00 this evening. The rain is difficult to see in the picture, but it was a downpour. Fortunately, we were in our apartment today when it started to rain. Yesterday, we were at the church when the downpour started. We were NOT going to walk home in it, so we called our regular driver, Brother Augustine, to come and get us. He was sitting down for his dinner when we called, but he came right away. He is always so helpful to us.



Many of the apartment buildings, including ours, have hallways that are open to the outdoors. That means rain is free to come into the hallways. At first, we were surprised to see the open-air hallways, but the openness is helpful in reducing the heat. This is the hallway just to the right of our door. The shininess of the floor seen here is the rain water on the floor.













We see many buildings under construction in Coimbatore. There seems to be a lot of building going on here. One building that is under construction is on a road that we take to see Sister Mary. They have now put up an effigy on the front of the building. We think that we have posted a picture of an effigy before, but this one is a close up view, so it can be seen clearly. Apparently, hanging these on buildings that are under construction is supposed to bring good luck.

Some of our busyness has been because we were shopping for furniture, appliances, and household items for a new missionary apartment. The Zone leaders, Elder Ram and Elder Racharla, are moving to another apartment so the newly assigned Sister missionaries can move into the apartment that the Zone Leaders have. The decision was made to have the Sister missionaries move into the Zone Leaders' apartment because it is closer to the church than the new apartment. The Sisters arrive in Coimbatore on Monday evening, and we will be going to pick them up from the airport. They will be staying with us for Monday night. The new apartment for the Zone Leaders is supposed to be ready by Monday, but we have had difficulty contacting the landlord to confirm the address and to determing whether or not the apartment will be ready.

 

Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving. While we did not have turkey with all the trimmings, we were able to make a "special" meal with mashed potatoes. Thanksgiving came up quickly, and we did not purchase a chicken when we went shopping at the supermarket. Had we purchased a chicken, we would have had chicken. We had ground beef in gravy, mashed potatoes, buttered carrots with dill, and tomatoes. We had chocolate cupcakes for dessert. The most special thing about this dinner was our company. We invited Elder Smoot and Elder Solomon. We wanted to make sure our fellow Canadian, Elder Solomon, had a real meal on Thanksgiving.

We were able to attend an exciting event this week. Elder Sekar (pronounced Shaker) came home from his 2-year mission in the India Delhi Mission.

His parents and sister were so excited to see him. We told them to smile for the picture, but for some reason, most people do not smile for pictures here. Really, they were so excited. Of course, his mother shed some tears when she saw him. He hugged his mother longer than anyone else, or maybe, his mother just held onto him longer. It brought back many memories of when our son came home from his mission in South Africa.



Of course, everyone wants to have their picture taken with the missionary couple. We are definitely treated with much respect and love. The people here are so welcoming and loving to us. As we watched this young man return from his mission, our thoughts turned to the time that we will leave these wonderful people. We will have a difficult time saying good-bye to all the people here. We will be filled with joy to see our family, but our hearts will ache to leave so many people who care for us so much.




This little girl has got to be the cutest thing ever. Well, we consider just about every little child here to be the cutest ever (except for our grandchildren, of course!!). She is the daughter of Sister Devya and Brother Suresh. Sister Devya is the sister to Brother Anand, and it is Brother Anand's entire family that we go to every week to teach English in their home. When we entered their home this week, the little girl came up to us excitedly jabbering away in Tamil. Of course, we couldn't understand a word she was saying, but she was certainly intent on telling us something. Her mother told us she was telling us about a new kitten they had. At the end of each English lesson, we teach some songs. One song that we sing (every week) is "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." She absolutely LOVES this song!! She is so fun to watch.

Elder Hodgson (seen in the picture) and Elder Challa (partially in the picture) accompanied us to the Anand family this week. Elder Hodgson is being transferred to Rajahmundry on Monday. We are sad to see him go. We do not like transfers because we get stongly attached to the missionaries. Elder Hodgson has been in Coimbatore since we arrived here. He has always watched out for us, making sure that we don't eat in places that might not be good. Whenever we had a question about whether or not to eat in a particular restaurant, we always talked to him.


This is a scene we don't see very often!! Pigs!!! Yes, pigs rummaging around in the garbage on the street that we always walk down. We have seen cows, goats, chickens, roosters, dogs, and cats, but NEVER pigs. We think the men let the pigs out of the truck to have a little snack.








After the pigs were finished their snack, the men rounded them up and put them back in the truck. We watched as they put one pig in. The pig was NOT happy. It was squealing and squealing frantically in protest.









Our Saturday and Sunday was spent at the church attending the General Conference sessions from Salt Lake. As many of you know, General Conference was held last week in Salt Lake City. In North America, most people watch it live, but because of the time difference between there and here, we watch it a week later. If we watched it live, we would be up until past 3:30 a.m. We heard all the new announcements almost right away last week end, but we did not listen to the talks until this week end. All the talks were wonderful. The spirit was strong as the all the speakers bore witness to gospel truths. We are blessed with technology that allows us to hear the words of the prophets and other speakers. Elder Holland gave a particularly powerful talk. President Eyring also gave a wonderful talk about prayers being answered in God's time, and he reminded us that we need to remember that God keeps His promises and that sometimes our own timetable can obscure God's plan for us. We have been spiritually edified for the past two days.


Between the sessions on Saturday, we bought pizza for the missionaries. Here is Elder Racharla representing all of them. Dominos pizza is . . . different here. We had green pepper with chucky chicken pizza. The chicken was spicy. Although the pizza has an Indian twist here, it was still good.








After being spiritually fed on Sunday, we returned home to be physically fed. A meal of rice with cheese & tuna sauce, peas, tomatoes, and cucumbers was a fitting meal for a stormy, rainy evening.