Maria's Real B Day

By her desk with new, special layered hair-dew!

Singing around the banana cream pie!
Maria and her hot air!

Tonight we enjoyed the company of some friends and celebrating Maria's real birthday. Maria even got her hair cut for this special day.

Maria's 14th Birthday Party

Maria and FriendsWith Meesha
Singing and Cutting the Cake.
We sang..."How do you solve a problem like Maria...!
An Indian tradition we keep with vigor!

New Arrivals and what a week!

This last week we welcomed our new colleagues, Mark and Aimee from Oklahoma! They got their feet wet in riding rickshaws and eating spicy foods. It’s great to have them here. It’s fun to see them experience the very same things with similar reactions we had all those years ago when we first arrived. The start of a new adventure....

Our kids seem to be extremely busy in extra-curricular fun with their friends. There's ballet for Maria and Danielle, guitar and cricket for Joseph - even the laborers in the construction site enjoyed his game. (see pictures). It’s NOT raining heavily every day now, so it’s great to have this cooler weather…in the upper 70’s most days. Danielle’s school teacher has been sick most of this last week, so she’s not accomplished that much this week. I know she doesn’t mind.

Maria turns 14 on Tuesday (24^th). This Sunday night we’ll have a party after our house church meeting.

Back Home in Pune

We made it back to Pune all in once piece, even with an overweight piece of exercise equipment! We didn't know if it'd make it onto the plane nor through customs here but it did. Merrilea and I are already using it! We'll let you know how the weight loss/exercise regiment is going. When electricity is out and no water is available (as water is not available right now...nor was it most of the day for that matter) it makes regular exercise a challenge. It just adds to the list of excuses. Now, we have no excuse for not exercising! We just met with our church tonight and my accountability partner is among our house church membership so we agreed to a fixed schedule...if we don't work out 3x per week minimum of 30 minutes each time, we'd owe each other 500 Rupees (roughly $15) each time we miss.

Sounds like a good plan!

Regarding the water problems, apparently the water pump to our apartment complex is out so for the last week we've had random water cuts. I'm grateful for buckets! The weather is cooler...it's been in the upper 70's now. It's been very comfortable even with the daily rains.

More as the week unfolds.
Bill for the family

Photos in Thailand

With the Youth


Covered in Shaving Cream!






Note: Danielle's chipped upper tooth! While at a waterfall on a family outing, Danielle fell on rocks...ouch!

Within a day the dentists here had it fixed so you couldn't tell the difference!!!


At an orphanage where they youth scrapped and painted some playground equipment!





Maria with friends in a 'Sung-Tao' taxi-truck


Nafisa with John!



Going Paint-Balling!

Joseph with the Youth

Joseph with other youth during talent night!

Fun on the 4th

Maria with our old friend "Unbearable-Bryan"




Visit with friends we had from the late 80's!!!

Ok, What is Merrilea doing driving a scooter with her friend and suitcase in tow? E-mail Merrilea and ask her!!!

Thailand

Pictures coming soon!

We arrived last Sunday morning. Maria met her friend at the airport and stayed with her for two days. We checked into our hotel and tried to get some sleep. Jet lag is crazy!

Check out Chiang Mai, Thailand on the web some time. It’s a great place to be as a tourist or for work. There’s lots to see and do…besides renting a motorbike for about $30 a day and riding beyond the north side of town in the mountains! Especially, if you first stop at Dunk'in-Donuts on the way up the mountain!

Our family LOVES Thai food. In 2005 when we were in Kittanning, PA…a small rural community about an hour north east of Pittsburgh, at their county fair there was a Thai food stall! It was GREAT! Asia has come to us in the US.

Oh, about our trip over here: I think the Lord was telling me, “It’s not about us:”

• In the monsoon rains we traveled to Mumbai over a 4 hour trip and the bus we were in with 8 others leaked…we got wet on the inside!

• In Mumbai, it took us the longest we’ve ever had to go from check-in to get to the departure gate.

• The transfer from our arrival to another flight was less than smooth

• While leaving Pune, the electricity went out in our apartment complex so Maria and Joseph helped take our luggage down 5 stories to the waiting bus.

I’m reminded that the reason why we are on the flipside has nothing to do with personal gain or pleasure. Sure, we have jobs to do and goals to reach but it ultimately is about the Lord and His agenda – Knowing Him and making Him known.

I humbly bow in his presence.

PS
The rash is almost gone!

Makin' Ravioli

Just before we left for Thailand, Merrilea had some friends over and they with our kids made all sorts of stuff - from cookies to ravioli!

It was great tasting all the foods. Even Nafisa could it them as they made them from rice flower. We're keeping Nafisa away from wheat due to food allergies.

With a Little Bit O' Rain

June 23 after a full night of rain...and more rain to come for 3 months

The middle of May:
The beginning of June:

These pics were taken just 2 weeks apart from our bedroom patio.

Gotta love the horses!

Rainy Season has Begun

The picture is from 2 years ago. Joseph and Danielle accompanied me on a trip to Aurangabad. It's 5 hours north of Pune. That's not the Taj Mahal but it's the same idea. We had a blast.

Rainy season has finally started. It doesn’t rain every day but it pours for a few hours most days. Our kids are pushing their schoolwork hard as we’re due to leave for Thailand next Saturday for our “visa-run.”

The internet has been working great lately so Maria has been able to instant chat with her cousin, Jamie, in Colorado. It’s been great. (Hi Jamie!). Nafisa’s been able to talk online with Merrilea’s folks, too. I’m not sure anyone can understand but 15 syllables of what Nafisa actually says…but it sure is fun!

We’re off to Thailand due to visa restrictions here in India. We’ll be back on 10 July…ready to receive new team members – Mark and Aimee!

More from Thailand

Picnic on the Hill

In one of my rare moments, we did something spontaneous this week....Merrilea ordered some cheap (but GOOD) Kati Rolls (spicy sautéed chicken rolled up in a tortilla-like bread), iced tea and chips. We all got in the car and drove up a nearby mountain...

Well, at least we got to the base of the mountain but they were repaving the road so…off we went hunting for another spot. Merrilea saw a sign for a farm in the same area so we went for about a mile on a windy dirt road to the base of a big hill. We finally go to the top at sunset – thus the pictures.

It was real windy up there and Nafisa couldn’t stop pointing at things giggling with her hand over her mouth and saying “WOW!” We think we ought to do this more often!

Think!

Pics are from this week's youth group called YUCK - Youth Under Christ the King.

Quotes from Think! Why Critical Decisions Can’t be Made in the Blink of an Eye by Michael R. LeGault

A culture of unaccountability is a culture without incentive, and a culture without incentive is the death of critical and creative thinking. (71)

…the huge, unprecedented boom in various learning disabilities is in keeping with America’s transformation from a self reliant culture to a culture of dependency . . . this trend to a shift in philosophical values, away from the common acceptance of the view that one’s shortcomings are a result of flawed character or lack of initiative and toward the idea of a self in which one’s flaws are a product of hardwired maladies and disorders. (95)

There is a burgeoning demand for reasons to believe we are guiltless. In essence, we have created a huge market for both disabilities and therapy. (96)

The rise of ‘stress,’ or rather the symptoms of stress, in contemporary society is a sign not only that more people are in difficult situations, but tellingly, that they are unable to respond to or think their way out of these situations. (160)

Anger, frustration, stress, and anxiety are themselves a form of information. They are the emotional precedent for critical and creative thinking. One of the main problems in contemporary society is that many people mistake the emotion for the thought. Difficulties, sensation, emotion, information – they’re the beginning of the heroic journey of the life of the mind, not its end.” (182)

The biggest puzzle is not solving and fixing problems per se, it is fixing the thinking that causes problems … But the complexity and severity of degree of these afflictions suggest an intellectual malaise consisting of . . . not merely …. a breakdown in thinking, but often a disconnect between thinking and action; a disjunction between plan and execution, between intent and result. (309-310)

A day in June…

Maria is spending the night with her friend, Meisha, one of her best friends here in India. Danielle (who currently is grounded) is learning Ps 91 and Hebrews 12:1-2 to become ‘ungrounded.’ Nafisa…well she’s just her happy self. She scared me today as she opened the front door when a local guy rang the door bell. No one else appeared to have heard the doorbell, but there was Nafisa… I think it’s about time we installed the security door which would need a bit more of a brain to open (I hope!).

Merrilea received a call today from Waheyda, her Muslim librarian friend so she’s out with her. I’ve cooked steak and potato for supper and am about ready to give Nafisa a bath.

I’ve been gone for 2 weeks. In that time, the girl’s bathroom sink faucet broke and as the rains have begun, we found water coming in under the door from our bedroom patio. I’m glad that a mason and plumber were only a few blocks away. We hope to get that fixed tomorrow. AND, after getting cut off with DELL computers in the US four times yesterday, I finally got hooked up with their tech guys who promised to call in the next few days to come to our home and fix my DVD drive! The funny part of it was, two of the times I called, I got someone with an Indian accent. Turns out they were in Delhi and in Bangalore…here in India! Too bad I couldn’t have paid local instead of international calling rates !

Missing our family and friends in the US.

Goodbye to the team from SC!

Our family enjoyed our time together last Wednesday with team. They traveled 4 hours by train. Merrilea and the kids even made it off the train pretty quick…quite a feat as there are so many people using that train station in Thane…a suburb of Mumbai.

It was great reconnecting with our family and then off they went while Joseph remained with me and the team for another few days. We had a great time. The rainy season (monsoons) ought to have started in a week but the rains came early, though it rained only the night before the team left – not interfering with their work. I’m grateful for the boldness the team had in their project. Bill and Ross, the team from SC, ought to be back with their families by now. Ross is a new grandfather! Congrats!

The rains in our home city of Pune (pronounced POO-nah) have started as well.…boy are we glad our organization has furnished a car for us a year ago…no more walking in the rain!

More as the week progresses,

Bill for the fam