From Pongal to District Conference

Pongal started last Sunday and continued until Wednesday. Pongal is comparable to our Thanksgiving, but it is much longer. It is rooted in the Hindu religion, but it is celebrated by everyone in India. It is more widely celebrated in Tamil Nadu. Government workers here get 3 days off for it. As with other festivals and celebrations, women often decorate the outside of their homes and businesses with beautiful designs made from coloured powders. We have been told that the powder is from rice, but some of the powders have a glitter to them, so we think some may have some kind of salt crystals in it, but we are not sure of that.
Some designs are simple white drawings.

 

 Others are colourful works of art.


 

 

Monday night we went to Brother Sekar and Sister Shanthi's house. We arrived a bit early, so we had time to go up to the roof top of their house. Roof tops are inspiring. Somehow, being up above the city makes India look different. It also seems more peaceful and at the same time, exhilerating. The Sekar's have some coconut trees in their yard, so we were able to be close to the coconuts (I bet you were all thinking that we climbed the tree to get this close!).







Here is Elder Tiefenbach posing in front of the top of the coconut tree. Coconut trees are very common here, but we were excited to be up in the tops of them.

They have a pile of coconut shells, which they use to burn in a stove (seen below). The stove is sometimes used to boil water, but we don't know when they boil water up here. Mostly, they use the gas stove in their kitchen. Brother Sekar said that they often sleep up on the roof on hot summer days. That certainly sounds extremely uncomfortable to us. They bring up thin mats and put them down on the cement and sleep the night away.

 

We were able to catch the sun setting in the west. We don't see the sunsets like this from the ground view. We mostly don't see the sun setting at all. We just notice that it gets dark very fast. From our high vantage point we were able to witness the quickness of the sun setting. Within a few minutes of this picture, the sun was behind the mountain, and then within a few more minutes, the sky was dark. The colours in the sky are largely from the smog.




 
We had a special training session with President and Sister Funk this week for the Coimbatore Zone. In preparation for that, we were asked to buy some fruits and vegetable for the lunches for the two days. We had trouble finding a market that was open that sells in the quantity that we needed to buy. We ended up finally finding the stores open on Wednesday. While we were buying the fruits and vegetables, we thought we would pick up some cauliflower for ourselves. We were fortunate because the truck delivering the cauliflower arrived just before we left. The men unloading the truck happily took a cauliflower off their pile, chopped off the outer leaves, and handed it to us.

 
Zone training was great! Although the training doesn't apply directly to our assignment, we enjoy attending because we learn many things that we can apply to ourselves and that will be useful in other church service. Another assignment we have at these Zone meetings is to be an observer as the missionaries practice the things they have learned. We then give feedback about their practice. We enjoy helping the missionaries out this way.

Elder McDonald (serving in Erode) was asked to lead the music. He needed to raise the stand because he is about 6 feet 5 inches. As he attempted to raise the music stand, he pulled on the top, and the entire top came off. He held the top of the stand with the book perched on it for the entire song. It was funny!

Elder Mills (second from the right) has taken the place of Elder Ram. We have already become very fond of Elder Mills. He is soft spoken, is concerned for others, is polite, and is always appreciative. Elder Mills is the Zone Leader with Elder Vaiphei (right of Elder Mills). Elder Smooth (left) and Elder Justesen are the elders in First Branch. Right now, we have only one set of missionaries in First Branch. The other set were transferred out last week.




 
District Conference this week-end was great! The choir was amazing. After the choir sang Saturday night and today, many people said that they thought they were watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. That may be a slight exaggeration of the quality of the choir, but they were wonderful. The only mistake was made by Sister Tiefenbach, who forgot that she inserted an interlude between two verses. So, she merrily began leading the choir for the next verse. This really confused the choir, but we all made a good recovery. Most people did not notice anything happened. To me, it was very noticeable. Twelve men in Coimbatore District were advanced to the Melchizedek Priesthood. Elder Tiefenbach ordained two of them.

Elder Tiefenbach ordained Brother Raja. He is a great man, and we feel he will be a great leader here someday. His story of faith is one that we will share when we return home. We love to visit his family every week. This is the family that invited us on Christmas day.

The other brother that Elder Tiefenbach ordained was Brother Suresh. This is another family that we feel close to. (We feel close to many families here. We get sad thinking about the day we will have to leave them.) Brother Suresh is so eager to learn about how things are done in the church. When he learns a new principle, he does his best to implement it in his family. We had a baptism in Second Branch today, but we were not able to attend it because of the priesthood ordinations.

We ended our Sunday with having Elder Mills and Elder Vaiphei over for supper. Elder Mills celebrated his birthday today, so we wanted to make sure he had a birthday cake. We hope they enjoyed the North American food. They ate well, so we assume it met with their approval. Sister Tiefenbach made carrot cake for his birthday cake.

 

As the sun sets on another week in Coimbatore, we have the opportunity to express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the opportunity to be here in India. Although we miss home, we have met many wonderful, dedicated people whom we will always remember and cherish. A great blessing we have is to be with the young missionaries. We love them and become very attached to them. We express our gratitude for the support of our friends at home and especially to our family who always remember us in their prayers. We love to hear that our grandchildren pray each day that "Grandma and Grandpa will have a good time on their mission." Well, we are having a good time. We have been richly blest.