The Eagle has landed

At last report (see yesterday's post), Abbie was already over four hours late taking off from Heathrow, most of which were spent sitting inside the plane. (Keeping the seat warm, I guess.) I sent a message on to Jeff so he could watch the flight progress on the internet. He called at about the time she was supposed to arrive and said the arrival time was to be about 9:30 p.m., which would be 6 hours later than scheduled. That was 3:30 a.m. our time, so I told him not to call me when she got in.

A Victim of the Technology Gap

My computer and my cell phone don't talk to each other. My computer (4+ years old) is fluent in Infrared, but has no clue about Bluetooth. My cell phone (approx. 1 year old) never bothered to learn Infrared, and only speaks Bluetooth. So when I took pictures of what we were doing today, (because I didn't have my digital camera with me), I used my cell phone. If you come over to my house, I'll show you the pictures I took. At the moment, I can't transfer them to the computer...they are before and after pictures of the work we did at Yvonne's house this afternoon.

Yvonne is an English woman who was baptized as a member of our church several years ago. She has never really recovered from the death of her husband in April of last year. She gradually began to show more and more signs of inability to care for herself, and an inability to connect with reality. It's been over two months that she's been in an institution that helps women with varying degrees of mental problems. Unfortunately, she continues to deteriorate physically and mentally. When we went to her house last week to pick up some clothes to take to her, we saw the state of the yard (garden), which had waist-high weeds that were dead, a virtual fire hazard. Inside, in the kitchen, there were still scraps of food and empty milk cartons that had been sitting there for over two months. Last Sunday, I asked for volunteers to come help clean up the yard and the kitchen, at least. There were about 10 of us who worked about 4 hours this afternoon. The kitchen looks clean at least, even though there are days of work ahead, if the cabinets were to be properly cleaned. In the outside clean-up, we had our share of thorns in the flesh...rose bushes, bougainvillea, and brambles. Trivia fact: you may know what bougainvillea is ...a rambling vine-like plant with loads of blooms. Very pretty. But they are also very treacherous. The thorns on bougainvillea are twice the size of those on roses.

We have 20 or so bags of trash and cuttings to be carried off, but we didn't quite finish. Still need another couple of hours to get the rest of the yard cleared. Unless I figure a way to get the pictures to the computer, you'll just have to imagine the before and after. Fill in the (technology) gap.

A Call from America

"You sound like you're breathing hard," she said. Duh... by 4:30, I had already been wrestling with entangled vines and brambles for two hours. When Abbie called from Jeff's house, I was in the process of attacking one of the roots of a vine (which shall remain nameless, as I haven't a clue what it's called), whose runners travelled 15 ft (5m) or more through bougainvillea and climbed walls, invading and entwining itself in everything it encountered. The yard at the back and the side of the house was literally taken over by these vines. Abbie had arrived about 6 hours late (9:30 p.m. Dallas time, 3:30 a.m. here), and she said that the first meal on the plane was about 2:30 p.m. (still on the ground at Heathrow) and the other one about 12 hours later, not long before landing at DFW. But praise the Lord, she got there fine and is spending the weekend with Jeff and Liz before going to Joy's on Monday.

So this evening, after our adventures in the briar patch, we practiced the songs for the service tomorrow afternoon. Sarah (12) played the piano; Orlando, the guitar; I, the harmonica. It's obvious the music won't be the same without Abbie, but there's no reason for the praise to be any different.