ThahMe started it. He told me when he was building his room that he wanted to plant flowers around it and make it look nice. Of course I agreed, and so Thah Me spent days in the jungle, searching for just the right flowers to plant in the pots that I bought for him.

Then, Pearl decided to sweep up all the fallen leaves in the yard. As I watched her work, I noticed that the weeds were making her task difficult. So, Hannah and I came up with a new occupation…weed pullers! We would go out each morning and pulls weeds until my hands got too sore to work any longer. But, I noticed that the more we did, the nicer things were looking! So, we cleaned out the creek, put in gardens, and then started more serious landscaping. It was like the snowball effect! Everyone got enthusiastic, and worked on the grounds every chance they could.

Yesterday, I got the bright idea of going to a neighboring town and buying some nice flowers. The sticks that Thah Me was bringing in did not have the instant beautification qualities that I wanted. (I am far too American to want to wait for those sticks to sprout, and some day bear flowers….I am from the land of email and digital camera’s, you know!)  So Roy, Hannah and I jumped on our trusty motor bike and headed off into the great unknown. Over two hours later, we arrived at a really nice nursery, that had all of my dreams for sale. I had a blast picking out the prettiest flowers, fruit trees, and then more flowers! We packed that motor bike trailer to the hilt, and then climbed back on the bike for our lengthy ride home.

Hannah had really enjoyed the ride to town in the trailer where she has plenty of space to play. But, riding for 2 1/2 hours on a motor bike is a bit taxing for a little girl. This is where I found the value of belt loops. Roy drives the motor bike, Hannah sits behind him, and I sit on the back. I found that if I hold tightly to Roy’s belt loops, he gets the distinct feeling that if he were to go too fast and crash bad things might happen to his pants, and Hannah has a ready made car seat! She cannot get past my arms on either side of her, unless she were to stand up and step over them, which I resolutely discourage. Parents in America should be SOOOOO thankful for those car seats!

We made the trip in a speedy 5 hours, and drove back into the training center grounds in a rain storm. My students came piling out of the house and stood in the rain ooing and ahhing over those flowers! Reguardless of the rain, we set them all out where we thought that they should go. Everyone was giving their suggestions, and trying plants out here and there to see how they would look.

Today, we had a grand planting spree, and when Elani got here for a visit, she told us that it looked like a resort! We figured that was a pretty good compliment!

All this activity also gave us the opportunity to talk with the students about “cleaning” up our lives, and making them reflect Jesus, just as we are cleaning up our property and making it look like Christians live there. That was a new idea to them, and has added incentive to the work.

So, next time you come to visit, you can enjoy the sweet smell of perfume in the air, the flowers with their faces looking up to heaven, and the happy smiles of students with clean hearts and work worn hands.