Thanksgiving Week

This week has been INCREDIBLY HECTIC!

We are about 40% moved into our new apartment. Painting finished Monday, cleaning on Tuesday and we began moving Wednesday with one small truck. The plumber showed up and the electricians today along with another small truck today. We took off on Thanksgiving, spending the morning making mashed potatoes for 30+ people! We joined several other Americans in our city to celebrate together. We even watched the 2006 Rose Bowl game with Texas and USC on DVD! What a game! I usually am not a Texas fan but it was great…all in the last 6 minutes of the game! (We don’t get live American Football over here, so even watching American TV with commercials is cool!...actually seeing a car commercial…in American English!!!!) We hope you all had a good time with family, celebrating together. We sure did.

Over here in India, unless you pay the big bucks, moving is tough. Even when you pay the big bucks, like we did a few years ago, things get broken and mishandled and scraped up pretty bad. So, this time we decided we’d ‘direct’ the moving process with hired trucks/drivers. It is VERY cheap to do it this way in comparison but it turns out to be a bit of a headache…directing the moving of bookcases so the walls don’t get scratched and so the furniture doesn’t get scratched either…all in Hindi! Great language practice, though that is not what Merrilea and I were thinking this morning. :-)

As I was sitting discussing business with some of the local people we came to serve on Wednesday, this move took on a whole new perspective for me. Yes, it IS a hassle and we all are VERY weary, but God has given us a love for the people here making the hassles worth it.

We’ll be totally moved by Wednesday we hope. I’ll be making a full pot of coffee in the morning to start packing more things into boxes! More after the move!

Bill for the family