Our visitors have arrived! They made the whole trip without any major glitches. I had spoken to the agent here in Matthew’s Ridge a week ago, letting him know that the sisters were coming, and asking him to make the reservations. I told him that they each would have about seventy five pounds of excess cargo (you are allowed twenty five pounds free) so he needed to let the air service know so that they would possible reduce the number of passenger tickets they would sell to allow for the additional cargo. He said I could pay for the tickets the Tuesday before they came.
When I went by to pay for the tickets, he told me he was going to call and pass the information along (meaning nothing had been done about making the reservations yet). Then yesterday I stopped by and he told me that the plane was booked full, so the excess luggage might not be able to come until the next flight (which was exactly why I had made a point to reserve the seats and weight early). But when the plane came this morning, they were the only passengers on the plane, so there was no problem with fitting all their luggage.
It’s always nice to get visitors, since they always bring some goodies with them, like pepperoni, dark chocolate, and other things that are hard to come by here. Also they brought some additional funds for me with them. It will be a test of their Christian personality to be sharing an 8’ X 8’ room for two months. But one of the first orders of business for them was to hang hammocks under the building next to Terri’s.
Yesterday I went to Kaituma. On the way there I got a flat tire on the front of my bike. I opened up the tire and took the tube out to find the leak. It was right by the valve stem, which are very difficult leaks to fix. I cut a hole in a patch and fitted it over the valve stem. I had some difficulty getting the valve stem back into the rim. I ended up using a valve stem tool to reach through and line it up. I closed up the tire and inflated the tube partially a couple of time without the valve core in to let the tube seat itself. I then looked for the valve stem tool to put the core back in the valve stem, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I thought maybe I had kicked it while I was working on the wheel, but could not find it. The only thing I could think of was that it had fallen inside the tire and I had closed it up with the tool inside. I ended up opening the tire again, and sure enough, there was the tool. It reminded me of how they say surgeons have to be careful to account for all the sponges and other things they use before closing up a patient.
I was a little nervous as to whether the patch would hold to get me to Kaituma, but I had no further problem. However, I was determined to try to get a new tube to install before heading back. I was able to get one and, after letting everyone know that I had reached and we would have the study at 1 PM, I replaced the patched tube with a new one. There was no school yesterday, so we had a number of children join the group. Sharon’s cousin, Naomi, was there for the third week in a row. Sharon’s man, Terry, came and sat in for the last twenty minutes or so, taking a turn reading, and commenting as well.
Our Sunday meeting was rather light this last week, we had ‘only’ 76 at the meeting. But on a positive note, we had two new ‘big’ people come for the first time. One was a woman that Mary and Eugene have been studying with for a couple of months. After the meeting, Terri was talking to her, saying how nice it was for her to have come. She told Terri that she was going to be coming regularly. The other one was a woman who is good friends with one of my studies. At the study this week I mentioned how nice it was to see her at the meeting. My study told me that the woman told her how much she enjoyed the meeting, and she was planning on also coming regularly.
I ordered wood this week to use for temporary seating for the Memorial. I ordered it in such a fashion that if it ends up that we have to move out of our living space to enlarge the Kingdom Hall, the wood can be used in building a new house. I have also spoken to an official here, asking what would be needed to put up another building on the property, and he mentioned that an application would have to be submitted, so I asked him to get an application for me.
My reminder about everyone’s obligation to email us yielded two emails this week. So, “Thank you”, to both of you, and “What’s the matter?”, to the rest of you.
This week’s pictures are of our visitors. One shows them upon arrival at the airstrip. I took one of the group hug upon their arrival, but chose not to use it as no faces were visible, so it could have been anybody. The other shows the girls already settled into their places alongside Terri.
