Tidbits


I am not sure of where to start this morning. Lots of little things happen here that I want to tell you about, but when I sit down to write I can’t remember what they were! I guess I can start with the spider episode.
Yesterday Roy was not feeling well. I think that his electrolytes were off from all that work in the hot sun. ( I did the rehydration thing on him last night, and he is feeling better now) So, when I went into the bedroom, he was laying on the bed. He wordlessly pointed to the wall behind me, so I turned around to see what he was pointing at, and there…..on the wall…..in MY room…… was a HUGE spider!!!!! I tried to act calm and composed while leaping onto the bed and trying desperately to get the mosquito net over me while calling in the marines, special forces, and Andrew Tremaynne and Travis to come to my aid! Tremaynne reacted appropriately by saying that he was going to go get our large bug killing tennis racket, but Andrew calmly walked over to the spider, and said, “oh, it is just a good spider, they eat bugs and stuff and will not hurt you”. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was hurting me, since I was likely to die of a heart attack at any moment, but he was not impressed. He actually had the nerve to chase the spider into a crack where Tremaynne, who came bounding up the steps with his weapon in hand about then, could not kill it. Do you understand what that means????? It means that I don’t know where this spider on steroids is hiding, and he might come out again at any time!!!!! You guys are praying for me, aren’t you?
Yesterday we went shopping again. I wanted to get some more shorts for the guys, and some light weight skirts for me, since we will be leaving soon, and I know where to buy those things here. It is interesting. When you go to a shop for the first time, you have to really bargain for things. But, if you are loyal to your shop, when you go back, they always give you more at the same bargain price. So, you don’t have to haggle with them again. The place where I buy the shorts, the lady is really nice, and she speaks just enough English to be able to understand what I want. They are very nice shorts, and I get them for $4 a pair. So, I stocked up on those for Roy and Travis since they totally ruined a bunch of their clothes doing concrete. Then I went to a different place where I could buy skirts for me. The only problem was that I forgot to bargain with them! He told me the skirt cost $10, and I thought that sounded pretty cheap, so I just paid for it. Afterwards I realized my mistake! The guy thought that I was a pretty good customer with lots of money since I had not talked him down, so he tried to sell me a silk shirt. I was interested in the shirt, since I love silk, but I didn’t really want to spend any more money, so I tried to be polite, even though I was not all that interested. He was asking $24 for this shirt that was made at a local silk factory. But, as I did not jump at his offer, he kept lowering the price, until I bought the shirt for only $11. Wendy said that I could probably have talked him down more, but I didn’t mind that he made a little extra off of me since he worked so hard to do it! You would have thought that if I did not buy the shirt, I would have died on the spot or something. “Oh PLEASE madame, buy the shirt! You not like this color, then look at this color, you like???? Please, you must buy shirt!” How could I resist?
The Aussies left on Sabbath. They had a little farewell meeting that was really nice. I found out that their group is from Avondale Academy, and the kids had just graduated from the 12th grade a couple of weeks ago. This was their senior trip. They will be doing another project at an ICC orphanage, and then going on a backpacking tour of Lao for a month. They were a great group of people, and we really enjoyed working with them.
On Sabbath, Nareth came over to visit. He is in the 7th grade I think, and he is planning to be a pastor. By the way, grade level does not have much to do with age. Nareth is around 16 years old. His Dad is a Pastor, and he is really proud of his dad, you can tell. He and Andrew would like to travel around the country on bikes doing evangelism during school breaks. The only thing stopping them at this point is that Nareth does not have a bike. Can you imagine, $180 dollars stopping a young man from being able to get out and witness for the Lord? If anyone is interested in helping Nareth get a bicycle, just let me know.
Living here at the school is not short on danger. On Sabbath evening last week, when all the kids were out in front of the orphanage houses playing games, a couple of drunks with long, sharp swords came onto the school property looking for a fight. A couple of the boys had to run for their lives to keep from getting caught by these guys. (one of them was Nareth) We don’t go anywhere by ourselves at night anymore. It makes me thankful for the nice bars over all the windows here.
Roy and Travis are busily working on the trusses for the studio today. They did the engineering yesterday, and are making one truss so that the workers here can see how to do it. We are planning to leave for Thailand, maybe tomorrow or the next day. We want to travel through Lao on the way there so that we can get a longer visa. Since nobody has been that way that we know of, it should be quite interesting. So, if you don’t hear from me for a while, it is either because we are in transit, or because we are stuck in some far off location, totally broke because some poor Lao stole all our money! They say that the borders to Lao are ten times worse than the one coming into Cambodia. But, we can get a four month visa instead of a two week visa by going that way. Nothing like a bit of adventure, right?