Tuesday 7/17/07

Tuesday morning services began the ministers’ meeting. We sang “How Firm a Foundation” and received roses, robes, and flowered leias. Bro. Jeff preached from Colossians during the ministers’ meeting. He mentioned the 4 prison gospels: Ephesians (possessions in Christ), Philippians (joy in Christ), Philemon (forgiveness thru Christ), and Colossians (preeminence of Christ). He started in Colossians chapter 1 – intro to Christ’s preeminence. He said chapter 2 is a defence of the preeminence and chapter 3 and 4 is preeminence demonstrated. Once again the sermon was translated into 3 languages and it was an awesome message. Tuesday afternoon we were taken to Salem to shop by Bro. Nelson and Bro. Nixon. It was kind of funny that as we were driving into town 2 of the orphan boys had left the orphanage and were walking down the road toward town. The look on their faces when Bro. Nelson drove up beside them and rolled down his window was priceless. Talk about busted! He firmly but gently told them to go back to the orphanage. They tried to explain what they were doing when Bro. Nelson, more firmly, told them to go home. They turned around without a further word and high-tailed it back to the orphanage. The children at the orphanages are well-behaved, but they are children just the same and I admire the tremendous amount of hard-work and dedication it takes to care for so many of them. We drove on into Salem and stopped off at the printers (I think) and then went to Spencer’s grocery store and bought a few things. Spencer’s was a nice little store with groceries and a few clothing items – sort of like a mini-Wal Mart. Then we went and bought saris and salvahs (loose-fitting pants with a tunic and shawl over them). The others bought some of both, but I just bought 2 salvahs since we brought the 2 saris with us that Karen had bought in Dec. My 2 salvahs cost 560 rupees or about $14 U.S. money for the 2 of them since about 40 rupees is a dollar. Suganthi ( a young woman who is the daughter of a Pentecostal minister) went with us and translated and she was an excellent help in getting us what we needed. We then hurried home since it was pouring down rain – no more shopping. Tuesday night was the campfire talent show under the brush arbor. Bro. Judson and Bro. Boopithy actually did a fire-breathing show for us that was awesome! Then Bro. Nelson read the first chapter of Genesis that was very powerful. He has a very commanding and reverent voice! Different groups sang and performed skits. 3 of the older orphan boys were hilarious. One pretended to be Bro. Guna, one pretended to be Bro. Jeff, and one pretended to be Bro. Sake Pasate. They were mimicking speaking in the 3 different languages and making fun of “hang-ups” in the translation. Eventually they started speaking gibberish to sound important because they could not understand each other. The whole crowd was laughing so hard we were crying. Then Bro. Nelson had written out different ideas for skits on little pieces of paper. He put them in a chair up front. Music started playing and we passed a soccer ball around from person to person. When the music stopped, whoever had the ball last had to come forward and draw a piece of paper and perform whatever was written on the paper. It was a lot of fun.