Our destination is West Garo Hills in the Indian state of Meghalaya. Maranatha has a school building project there with special sewage and sanitation concerns. David will be working with plumbing coordination and also reviewing pictures of other church building sites all over India through remote access. The nature of his job means internet is mandatory for us. Hooray! My job description is less defined but my education is in pastoring and I'm sure that is what I will be doing with or without a title or church. If you would like to learn more about West Garo Hills I have found an excellent government website for the area. http://westgarohills.gov.in You can find a description of the people, government, and wildlife there. We will only be in Garo Hills until the school is completed then we will either be moved to another building site or settle down near the Maranatha office in the city of Gurgaon near New Delhi.We plan to leave our college town by August 12 and visit some family before we fly. It's been two yard sales and a few hundred dollars since we first verified we were going. Some furniture and three vehicles are gone but a glance around the house tells me we still have a long way to go. What I can't see is the piles of stuff in the borrowed garage that didn't sale last Sunday. What a burden stuff is. How difficult to pry oneself free of it. We can take only what we can fly with and store only what will fit in the small bedroom I used to occupy in my parents' home. Everything else must go, even if it means enduring the humiliation of strangers pawing through my things and bickering with me about 50 cents for the third Sunday in a row. I hate yard sales. Still, there is something cleansing about seeing it go. There is something freeing about allowing the miserly housewife to give me a quarter for my glassware and not caring. It all came from the thrift store anyway. I can't take it with me. It's a strange ritual David and I have been caught up in. We went in to the conference office earlier this week to make our wills and set up a power of attorney. We are putting all of our estate in order and I have never felt more ready to die or prepared to live.
The most difficult thing to give up has been the dogs. "Robin", found his way to us a few months ago when we were camping. He followed us on a five mile hike and we discovered that he had been abandoned near the camp ground about ten days before. He had a number of behavioral issues related to abuse and abandonment but he improved a lot under our care and was great friends with our miniature poodle "Teddy". After many posters and prayers and mass emails "Robin" has finally found a perfect home with a man who loves him and takes him everywhere he goes. We are hoping and praying the same will happen for "Teddy". We will visit with a family this evening perhaps about taking him. Meanwhile, "Teddy" does not understand why there is no longer any "Robin" for him to play with and he has been moping around the house for the last couple of days. Poor sad poodle. How do you help the dogs understand?
We had hoped to move into the spare bedroom in my parents home this weekend so that we would have a couple weeks to finish the interior painting project I started when we moved in. We promised the landlord we would do it if he bought the paint. But since we are not packed yet I don't think we will be out of here as soon as we had hoped. We'll have to paint fast. Anyway, here we sit, with a million loose ends to tie up and a checklist counting the few remaining days till we bury our life in America in dusty boxes and begin a brand new ones. We are glad will be sharing the adventure with us.
