Ye are Called to Labor

 Our top headline this week- after much intensive labor came the birth of our first grandbaby; Silas Stephen Lake born July 13 at 1:04 am, weighing 8'13" and measuring 21 inches!

Welcome Silas to the world!

We are so overjoyed! Our daughter Rachel pushed for 6 full hours before Silas decided to emerge from his comfy quarters! It was the 12 hours between hearing she had dilated to a 9 and the announcement of his birth that had those of us on the other side of the globe worrying and praying continuously that all would be well. After 24 hours of labor, she was so spent, and rightly so. She need not run a marathon now to prove her endurance. We're so very proud of her. Giving birth is hard labor! (When people ask you why it took so long for Silas to vacate the womb you can readily quote Acts 15:34.) We are so happy for Griffin and Rachel and know that baby Silas will bless all our lives.

              The newly formed Lake Family

I confess I'm a little sad to be so far away right now. I'm aching to hold him and be there to take care of my daughter. (Sigh) But we're all called to labor in different fields presently, and our labor here presented some interesting opposition this week before some compensatory blessings came forth. 

We had the closing down of a missionary area and apartment in Tiruppur and another inspection to attend to in Erode so we decided to travel on Monday by train. Though run down and antiquated, it was a new mode of transportation for us that we both agree we prefer over buses. Faster and less honking! And mosquitos don't generally hang out on windy trains. Big plus. Again, that feeling of being on a movie set in some past era pervaded. 

                     This ain't no bullet train. 

The best part of our trip up there was taking our Elders out to lunch on their P-day. The power must have gone out a dozen times during our meal. But our time with them left us feeling happy and confident in the rising generation.

The lights are on with Elders Bora and Sondi

The only icky part of the trip was being verbally accosted on the street. Twice. We haven't experienced that at all in our own city. Mostly they wanted to bully us to give them money. We can handle the gentle beggars just not the angry ones! We chuckle that everyone assumes that because we're Americans we're the rich kind. If that were the case we'd be using a private driver to take us to these places or at least buy a sleeper compartment, not general seating! Well, even if we were rolling in dough, we'd probably choose coach most days, just to get the public interaction. And quite frankly, we like walking instead of autos. We've been told this is odd behavior for senior missionaries. 🤷🏼

While waiting for the train back on a mostly deserted platform in Erode, we were approached by a friendly man who worked for Marriot and knew Randy Funk, a former Bengaluru Mission President. C'mon, now, what are the odds of that? He knew us by our unmistakable missionary look I guess, since we can't wear our tags. When we have these chance encounters we try to stay in touch via WhatsApp because you never know the why of it at the time.

Ravi the Bee

We had another odd occurrence inside our compartment with yet another crazy guy bothering us. Not wanting to create contention, we tried to just ignore him but when he got a bit threatening, our fellow "inmates" became our best defenders and chased him off. Thank you brave warriors! The Lord uses angels of every kind to bless and protect us.

                           The Men of Cell B

Back home, who should return on the scene after a long hiatus but Mohammed, our security guard!! He is back working, working. 

We missed you Mo!

We made another new friend, Arthi, a darling young woman who lives right across the lane from us. She works for an American company and is interested to improve her English so she came to English Conversation group, being the only female we've had so far.  We hope to see lots more of her as we come and go out of our apartment. Brother Augustine, as our voice, invited her to church so we'll see if she has any interest there too. We hope!

         Arthi and Silas share the same birthday!

Also this week we found a lot of compensatory joy in a couple of our new assignments. I've started teaching the Young Women of Ghandipuram Branch the Music Conducting Course in preparation for our keyboards to arrive. 

Deja vu!

Unfortunately, the shipment is stuck in customs and we may need some divine intervention to get them to us. I'm not sure if it will come down to bribery, we've given them all the paperwork they've requested. What can we do more? The kits were marked on the invoice as Bibles and other religious material. Could this be the holdup? Let's pray not. We need more musicians in India. 

And as of tonight, we're on week 3 of our Emotional Resilience Course they've asked us to facilitate. 

    This original missionary photo is only a year old but already outdated! Crazy to think we received our call on July 19th of last year and now we're really in the thick of it. Years fly by and the gray hair has caught up with us. 

Every week I think I surely won't have anything new to report the following week but sure as "heckfire", new people, places, and experiences come our way. This week especially, I wanted to hop on a plane and be done with it. Opposition is never fun. Plus I have a grandchild now, a new calling for us. (You may call me Ajji if you'd like. Telegu for Grandma). I have a little more empathy for those folks who don't serve a mission because of grandchildren and higher respect to those who do in spite of the fact. But we are convinced there are higher purposes for the small and simple things that engage us daily in our missionary labor here in India. We believe the Lord would still have us be here. Silas and our other grandson in utero will be blissfully unaware of our absence for awhile. (Maybe they've helped us from the other side?) And someday we'll be able to view the sum of our impact on our fellow sojourners, where we did the most good or where we fell short to fulfill our various stewardships. Then we will know for a surety where we should've been but for now we go by faith and where the Spirit directs. 

"For ye remember our labor and travail:

 for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. "

1 Thessalonians 2:9