sjamesho.v3

WOW! awesome! praise the Lord! within minutes of blogging the last post, i received a call from Baggage Services informing me that my big bag had arrived at Tampa (TPA). grateful to hear the great news, i inquired where it ended up. she told me that “well… it didn’t end up anywhere.” apparently my big bag was not loaded at San Jose (SJC) with my small bag and took the next flight to TPA. i feel a little sad that my two bags had to travel by their lonesome to TPA but i guess that is what reunions are for. there’s going to be a party all up in my room tonight!

okay… i think i’ve gone a little over to the weird but hey… i’m excited that my big bag is found. i’m wondering if i should peer out my window for the delivery and run towards it as it is coming. hehehe.

hmmm… i think there’s something in the good Book about lost items being found. Luke 15 has a series about it.

earlier this evening i was standing at the baggage carousel waiting for my two bags to greet me. one big, one small. as i was waiting i was looking forward to picking them up, getting into a taxi, checking into my hotel, and showering the travel “yuck” (what do they call that?) away. i stood in the middle of where the baggage appears from behind the wall and disappears and when i noticed my small bag being one of the first bags out i was delighted. it won’t be too long before the big one will follow… but it didn’t.

i realized that my small one was among the small bags and thought that maybe the big bag will be with the other big bags. makes sense, right? so i patiently waited till a series of big bags came and were taken by their respective owners. one by one they disappeared until the two doors of the carousel closed and the baggage track stopped. hmmm… maybe i missed it as it went around and one of the attendants placed it at the unclaimed baggage area. so i checked, hoping that it would be there… but it wasn’t.

i then went into Southwest Airlines Central Baggage Services counter to inform and inquire about my missing big bag. the service representative took the details and told me that it “should” eventually arrive at Tampa (TPA) later this evening… worse case scenario, by tomorrow morning… before my ship leaves port! in our conversation her words at times seemed to give a glimmer of hope that i will get it tonight… but it hasn’t.

the way that my big bag will eventually reunite with me will be revealed at the time and circumstances God sees fit for me to experience. the basic choices that i have currently is to either worry and stress over my big bag which has about 90% of my clothes and my ukulele. OR, i can relax, pray, and have faith that God is taking care of it… even to the worse of the worse case scenario should i never see my big bag and its contents again.

still it is quite the challenge to look at the time and NOT wonder, “why hasn’t Baggage Services called me yet?” faith… i have so much to learn.

today was our last day of painting and all the various related activities associated with it which included some over-hangs, green trim touch-ups, and a white wash on a newly built laundry house. the laundry house was the last item and i happened to be the last to leave since there was only one long ladder to use. unfortunately, i wasn’t around when they announced that the white wash had lye in it so after i washed up and joined the rest of the group for lunch, the skin on my hands were very pruny. then the pruniness turned into dryness.

in the afternoon, Lea, my dad, Daniel, and i had the opportunity to go into the town of Jeypore to look around. it was nice to be able to see a little more of the area besides the school compound. it was also rather interesting see how they use the middle of the road to park their bicycles and motorcycles. i guess the division it creates saves the town money so that they don’t have to build a center divide.

we walked around the town and found ourselves in the town’s marketplace where many people were selling everything from live animals to vegetables to curry powder. speaking of curry power, we also found in the corner of the market a curry powder “factory”. the fine powder was in the air and one can feel in breathing it in and in the eyes.

everywhere you looked you will find chili in its various varieties and forms. i wish i had the time to take a picture of all of them. but while we were at the market, there were two boys following me around. it wasn’t that i was scared that something would happen to me. it was just a bit annoying and bothersome to have someone follow your every move. also i like to take my time setting up my shots and i knew that if i didn’t keep on moving that the two boys will begin to press me for some money and/or offer to take my picture for money. so the pictures that i was able to take were quick to avoid all that.

as we were leaving the open market, this sign was on the right wall of the gate which i found to be quite the oxymoron. from the looks of the parlour itself it didn’t appear to be still in business. and from the looks of the sign, i have doubts that if i stepped in i would feel any change.

not too far from the market was a new building being worked on. although it may look like someone slapped ghetto up against its side, it is actually the scaffolding. i’m glad the scaffolding we used to get up on the roofs for painting were solidly constructed and metal.

we didn’t spend that much more time in town and when we got back we helped out the others by getting the kids ready for the Christmas pageant. in-between taking pictures of everyone’s involvement, i managed to get my hands working by attaching these sheep faces to the boys that were assigned to be… uh… sheep.

the finished process of wardrobe and costume.

this is the final scene of the pageant with all the cast together. i took a lot of photos throughout the scenes so you can view them at your leisure in my Photo Gallery.

we basically wrapped up most of the project today. tomorrow we will only work half-day in the morning on a couple of places which is nice. then some of us will be going into town to look around and get some culture outside of the school campus. i hope to be one of them.

i got to paint some of the green trim that had white drip-over. i was a nice change of pace. although it would have been nice to have someone else from the team to do it with. but it was cool. i had two boys helping me out – one to steady the ladder and the other to hand me the paint bucket to reload my brush.

i finished up a duplex that Tom had started at around 12:30p and since lunch was at 1:00p, i went back to the see what else the group was doing. i figured i’d take a break up till lunch and took this opportunity to take some photos of the others as well as some textures to add into my collection.

most of the children, if not all of them, have returned from Christmas break. so there is close to 600 of them on campus. that’s a lot of kids. yesterday we didn’t to playtime since the school was using that time to check them in for the new year. we didn’t do playtime today either. i’m not sure how you would manage playtime with 600 children at once AND having the girls and boys play separately… or not. the opposite genders here don’t interactively play together… except for the “Jacob and Rachel” one… which at first they were going to play separately until we made the combine.

this is what 600 children look like all seated in the cafeteria/meeting hall. Benita is telling the story of Daniel and his three friends – Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego. Tom mentioned that we could probably use the hall to play some games on Saturday night if we moved all the tables and stacked the chairs. we’ll see what happens. things are very “flexible” in India and could change.

10:20p. going to catch me some z’s.

today we second-coated four rooftops in the morning. tomorrow, we are going to help the kids put on a walk-through of seven scenes of the Christmas story for the other kids returning from break. so this afternoon the ladies went into town to look for some costuming items for the kids. meanwhile the men stayed behind and finished one rooftop and two trims.

Daniel and Barry went to the first two duplexes that we did. i went to the next duplex that needed the second coat on the rooftop and my dad, thinking that i had followed Daniel and Barry went in the direction of the two duplexes. i didn’t know whether my dad or the others for that matter would come and help since three people trimming and one person painting on the rooftop seemed a little off-balanced to me. about 10-15 minutes later my dad finally showed up and along with some boys from the orphanage we were able to finish the roof by the end of the afternoon… just in time for playtime.

actually, i was sort of hoping that our playtime participation was let off the hook since we ended so late. but i guess the children wouldn’t have it any other way. i was also hoping that the girls would be back from their town excursion to help out during playtime but they weren’t. i was a little nervous at first but was assured that i don’t have to have some grand plan… i just have to be there. it also was a relief that they loved playing the same games over and over again. so we did just that. duck duck goose, on the bank in the pond, fire on the mountain, and the a quick game of dog and bone.

we taught them “Angels We Have Heard On High” during worship’s song service. this song will be sung for the Christmas story walk-through and later when we group them according to the various scenes, we had the “angels” rehearse the song. they picked it up quick! they even continued singing through a black-out (a normal occurrence here so it obviously didn’t phase them) and sounded very lovely.

i’m not sure how all this will go down, but i do know that God has it all under control so it will definitely be a blessing to everyone.

10:30p. sleepy time.