Saturdays, April 15.16
The neighborhood Arisan (women's group) meets in the morning. The food is plentiful, starting with five or six kinds of 'snacks.' Then the main meal includes traditional soup and peanut sauce / verges that are the Indonesian version of a salad.
The women are lovely, lively, and fun. We are given a blank color page (from an adult coloring book) and markers to color while we chat. Some women carefully fill in flowers and paint stems. I fill in a bunch of backgrounds, wander around the flowers, and hand it in after painting the empty spaces yellow.
'Sign your name please,' and we do. They ask if I'm an artist. I think it's because I filled in the spaces between and no one else did. I and 2 others win coloring books. They hand out a sheet explaining 'spiritual connection to the colors you choose' but one look at me--with my minimal language skills and the plethora of colors--and they skip me.
As usual, they draw names and divide the Arisan fee. I get 1/3 of the June amount in advance. We will not meet in June because the women are expected to fast for Ramadan then. Meetings are not held without food.
I bake bread in the evening, using a cup of sourdough starter made last week with yeast brought last year from Europe by our family.
From 9-11 pm, I log on to a meeting with ministry leaders in Seattle and Texas. I am so energized by the conversation and ideas that I can't sleep until 1 am. Oh, I'm going to be tired tomorrow!
|||Sorry for spelling mistakes. I can't go to fix them on the iPad, which has frozen.|||
Sunday
The current series in church features young speakers. They are teaching through James and it's nice to hear young people preach.
At the end of service, our dinner guest list swells from 4 to 9. So the table is full - with 11 of us - by the time we sit down to eat at 1.
W uses a new gadget, a sous vide temperature control that makes tender chicken. Seeing the guests, I fry a frozen bag of fries, which disappear along with the rice, a broccoli-egg-cheese-sauce casserole, mixed veges, bread, and a salad. DrW bought the chicken and broccoli at the market yesterday. DrH mixed a delicious punch. A guest brings rice crackers. There's just enough. Perfect.
We end the meal with tea, Trader Joes chocolate squares, and home-baked cookies. I'll have to bake soon, something I do in great batches so we always have some on hand.
Around the table, we share networks, connections, and conversations galore. We tell something we thank God for and ask his help for things that concern us. The last guests leave before 4:30.
W and I are finished washing and drying dishes by then. Our helper has been sick for a week. I swish around the kitchen floor and hope she is doing better by Tuesday, her next day of work. The ironing is piling up.
Monday
Five of us study Mark 11. We discuss the authority of Jesus and his humility and boldness. And we pray together.
After noon, W and I head for town (my first time shopping since we arrived 1.5 weeks ago.) We check out digital pianos. We ask the Apple techies if my computer can be fixed. Nope, it's shot. When we turn it in, it beeps at me in a steady rhythm. We buy groceries. We drop off a gift with a friend. W checks out a lawnmower.
W returns to the Apple shop with an Envoy that can hold my computer files, amazing the young employees with his SSD enclosure The shop uploads my recent work onto it and gets info on what W's just shown them is possible. I'm just happy I haven't lost all our recent work.
I bake another loaf of bread for supper, which we eat with European vegetable pâté (thanks Kristi and Doris) and cheese. While W files our taxes, I watch a TV show. I can pick out a few Indonesian words by now.
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