You know that saying about "When it rains, it pours!"? Well, it's rainy season, so of course we've had lots of rain. But the past few days it seems it has poured every time it rained.
And last Sunday morning, although it didn't rain physically, it sure felt like it was pouring at the Lapp house. Suffice it to say, Daddy didn't have his sermon ready... Mommy and Shawn got sick during the night (the nausea, diarrhea, fever & throw-up kind)... and then several "needy" visitors stopped by with long stories and requests... and children needed to be helped, and sick people needed care, and sermon needed prepared, and... Thanks to God's grace (for giving strength) and a teacher's help (with the children) and a congregation's mercy (not throwing rotten fruit after an ill-prepared sermon) we are still here.
You know, there are two extreme tendencies I'm tempted toward every time I write: 1. Try to make the reader pity us, 2. Try to make the reader envy us. I'm sure these temptations are nothing new - I see both on FB all the time, but for me at least, this is the first I've ever done any social media type things and so I'm new to the battleground.
So, it's not all bad around here and it's not all great. In fact, it's just pretty normal life. Sorry if I portray it as anything else.
Another challenge we wrestle with here is that we want to actually live here. What I mean by that is that we are trying to make this normal for us - we don't want to always be tourists. And how that works out is that I try not to carry a camera around taking pictures of ordinary events. I mean, how weird would you feel if your pastor would take pictures during church services, fellowship meals, hymn sings, etc... So our goal is to really live here, not just report about living here.
So that works great until we want to update our blog. Then, suddenly we realize we can only give pictures of our tourist days and that's not a very accurate view of our lives. I can try writing about what we've done... yet, who wants to read that we had church two Sundays ago, and then we had a fellowship meal experience in the back yard, and then we went and sang for a poor elderly man named Mr. Winston. Yet, that's exactly what we did. And it was great, and I wish we had pictures to give you a visual. But I don't. So the wrestle continues...
Anyway, here are a few pictures from the last while.
We've sure been glad for the marble roller toy we brought along. It makes great entertainment for children and adults alike. Here, Euran (church member who often comes by to help us play Rook, etc) was seeing how tall he could build.
Not sure what the point was, but one evening amidst a lot of giggling, this troupe came prancing out into our otherwise calm kitchen.
On Saturday evening, Andrew John (a church attender)
supplied corn for a church corn roast.
Sammy Mapson (church member, 6'th grade teacher, school principal) displayed yet another of his many talents. (official corn roaster) Sid brought a watermelon and we all had a fun time with food & fellowship while the children had fun playing basketball, tag, etc.
Today Jen went around the school and took a few pictures of our children and their classmates/classrooms. So this is what our children do every weekday from 8:30 - 2:30.
Conrad and most of his Kindergarten classmates listening to Ms John.
The first grade class and Ms Miller. (Not sure if Caleb's name on the board is a good or bad thing)
Math class with Ms Schrock in 2'd grade.
Ms Lauver, spending part of her evening making some children's day by playing games with them.
Last night, on a whim, I checked out the forecast for the rest of this month. (1 week) Besides the obvious approx. 30% chance of rain every day, I thought it might interest some people that the highest high and the lowest low predicted for the next week were only 5 degrees apart. (High of 84, low of 79) Austin told me the other day that the humidity of the last 2 weeks never went below 85%. So there you have it. I don't think weather forecaster would be a high paying job here. :-)
And so, life goes on here much like it does in whatever part of the world where you are living. Only one life, will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last! Go with God!
