On the run. It's nuts!

 It never ceases to amaze us that the Lord is blessing us with the ability to love more and more people as our time continues on. With our own abilities, we simply couldn't keep everyone and their difficult names straight! There has to be some divine intervention involved to sustain this pace and capacity. Because the Savior set the example of ministering to souls one by one, we attempt to focus our love and attention on just one individual. Or two maybe, or perhaps a family, or even a small group. Or a crowd. What's more incredible is we're finding the depth of our love for the Indian people is expanding too. It is soul stretching! We are having so many blessed encounters with so many people, both one-on-one and in ever expanding larger groups. We keep wondering if we will reach our breaking point capacity and finally have to say no to a few assignments to not spread ourselves too thin? For example, we were asked last week if we would teach a marriage relations class in one of our branches for the next 8 weeks. Because they asked us to co-teach with our amazing friends Sister Punitha and Brother Ambrose, how could we possibly say no? We start that tomorrow. Also the young adults want us to teach more dancing at this coming week's FHE activity. You betcha! So in addition to teaching Music Conducting and Keyboard course (me), the Emotional Resilience Course on the national level (together), helping with English Connect for the missionaries, plus our own English conversation group, we are perpetually preparing and attending many lessons every week. On top of that, we meet every week with our missionary district who always deserves treats. Whenever possible we love to visit branch members both on our own or join with the elders. It just so happens one of our young adults got his mission call this week and we've been tasked to give him his temple preparation lessons before he leaves. And to add just a little more activity to our humdrum boring lives, Elder Rob loves to invite people over to our apartment to cook an American meal for them.  To say it was a slightly busy week is literary litotes! But the unexpected glitch was when Elder Rob once again developed a severe reaction that put him down in bed for a day with a slight fever and running to the bathroom every few minutes for two full days. This is the 2nd time for this to happen to him. He's finding the most effective way to deal with the intestinal distress is to simply fast for a couple of days to completely clear his system and reset his whole intestinal tract. He's made plans to make some drastic changes to his eating habits so this doesn't keep happening. But if it does continue, we will have to then address what might be a chronic condition. This might be the only way the Lord can figure out how to slow him down. But we hope and pray it's just a fluky overeating of the wrong foods and can be fixed with prudence and moderation. 

We'll start our photo journalism this week with the Sunday missionary fireside for Coimbatore District with Elder and Sister Chestnut from the India MTC (which for safety reasons has to be called something like the Indian Service Center). They got everyone so pumped for serving missions, we were ready to sign up for our next one!

 The Chestnuts. Their schedule must be as nutty as ours!

    Ramanathapuram Branch leaders and potential elders. We love these homies!

Same with Erode, a strong thriving branch with great leadership and leading the district in baptisms. We love to visit there when we can.

Semmedu future sister missionaries Sneha, Anandi, and darn, the name I can't remember!

That handsome bunch from Semmedu includes Barnabus, Joseph, Rahul, Saran, all surrounding the Branch President. Ladies, take your pick! I swoon frequently!

Our one-on-one time this week was with Jason, a young man we have seen blossom in the past 4 months since our arrival. His English is improving as is his confidence. He is planning to serve a mission when he finishes his college courses. He was so eager to try an American meal. He wolfed down the barbeque chicken, the baked potato with butter and cream, and the cole slaw, no problem! I'm always eager to get these young adults helping with transcribing the Tamil gravestones that I can't read. He just plowed through them, he never wanted to stop! The thing we've noticed is that our young adults love to come to our apartment and they love to stay. My belief is they crave the surrogate father time.

Scribing for his supper

It was Elder Mehta's birthday on District meeting day. Though they are so adorable in many other ways, this district is not quite ready for the Choir at Temple Square. 

Since we could take just a little time to celebrate, Elder Dunlap bought a ball and introduced them to 4 Square. They loved it!

Last week's attendee to English came a 2nd time and brought 2 new friends with him. The Elders were on hand and made some appointments to teach them some discussions. Score!

This week we taught them alternative phrases to say instead of OK. Okie dokie!

When it comes to zucchini bread, they are all for it! 100%! Absolutely! Count me in! Sign me up! You betcha! Sure thing! Yas!

We made a 3rd visit to Vadivu and Mag at the Old Folk's home. The best part was sitting on the porch with Saraswathi, chatting with her as she peeled the onions, picked the mint leaves off the stem, while Vadivu sliced the mushrooms. A cool breeze wafted through the early evening and it was ever so pleasant.

Mag cooked us a fabulous meal of chicken biriyani. Amazingly, they requested us to say a blessing both on the meal and on the ladies as we left. We left them with a stack of brochures in Tamil about the Plan of Salvation and the Doctrine of Christ to give to their Christian friends, Xavier and Stephen, wink wink, but we're hoping they'll be curious enough to read them too. We just adore this group of ladies. We feel supremely happy to be in their presence. Unfortunately, this was exactly when Rob started feeling a little queasy. I failed to mention we had taken the district out for biriyani for lunch earlier that same day so it was a double whammy for his digestive system. But believe it or not, we're suspecting it's the almonds that he's always snacking on in the morning and throughout the day. If it's not Jackfruit he's overindulging on, then it's gotta be the nuts. Google tells us eating too many almonds is not good for biomes. Ah nuts!

Two family visits rounded out our week. Beni is the most amazing Institute teacher (and Primary President) and I'm not exaggerating. She masterfully weaves her Institute lessons in English and Tamil so seamlessly, we get as much out of it as the native speakers. She is top notch in her knowledge of the scriptures and really gets to the heart and makes you ponder. Her brother Dani is so talented in music and is personable, as is their mommie. They all have clear beautiful singing voices. They want us to come back some time when Elder Dunlap can actually eat! We had a great discussion with them and the golf card game Play Nine was how we ended the visit. 

         Dani creamed us all with 5 over par 

Our last visit was earlier today. The Elders took us to a sister's home, just her and her daughter live there. The husband lives in the US and they've had some huge struggles but their prevailing faith amidst them all was very touching. They committed to come to Sacrament meeting tomorrow. They both asked for priesthood blessings which all 3 Elders assisted with. As we left, I just casually mentioned that this was a 2nd marriage for us and that Christ's gospel is definitely one of 2nd chances. I must have been inspired to say just exactly that because that was what opened the floodgates for her to share openly what the struggles were all about. She was so touched to hear that we are allowed 2nd chances, do-overs, restarts, and slate-washing beginnings because of the Atonement of Christ. It was what she needed to hear to give her hope in her situation. Her tears of sadness were changed to tears of joy before our very eyes. Look at these smiles at the end of our time together. 

Pria and Thila, the shortened versions of their beautiful but lengthy names

As a parting gift, since Elder wasn't able to eat her delicious cooking, she showered us with scarves she had crocheted. Once the weather cools, we will surely enjoy these!

                   Hearts knit together in love

Though we cut it so close with the slowest bus ride ever due to traffic, we got back in time to do our online Emotional Resilience class. But not before Elder could cook for our little Stripling duo. They got cheated out of their dinner appointment so he fed them some leftover Barbequeen chicken, coleslaw, rice and instant chana masala. No Indian would ever be caught dead using instant food, it would be like serving a tv dinner to your guests, but you know what? They ate every last bit of it, no complaints. 

As if the day hadn't been spirit directed enough, the most gratifying thing happened during our online course. The topic was overcoming addictive behaviors, the core principle was honesty with ourselves and others and having integrity to God. One of our participants sent us a private note in Chat that he needed help and asked how could he attend an ARP meeting. Having served a previous mission in that program we were able to connect on Whatsapp  after the class and show him how to find the nearest phone-in meeting (in Australia!) and how to get the manual in Gospel Library. This was a beautiful chance to minister once again to the one. Elder Dunlap would truly love to start that program up here, since apparently there's a need. Maybe if we have a slow day, we'll get serious about it. 

"Put on therefore, as the elect of God, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering; and above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts..."

Colossians 3: 12-15