Week 4 of classes has ended and I am able to go into a different mode for a few days. The past week's absence on the blog has been due to a terrible cold.  I slept a lot of the time that I was not studying or teaching.  Without a vehicle the life here has slowed. Lana, Rody, and April will go into town this evening to conduct a women's study that started last week. They will also be able to make a run to the warehouse store to get needed supplies for a women's conference being held here this weekend.

You may wonder what the women's conference is about. Although they directly discuss things spiritual and the development of a personal relationship with God there is a practical side as well.  One of those practical elements is based on a tour of the building they will receive when they first arrive. They will be shown how to operate the toilets and showers.  This is not the third world, but a lot of these women live in homes that do not have running water.  Can you imagine finding a faucet that distributes both hot and cold water? Faucets are hard enough to figure out in America (well, maybe just for me)!

We were without most of our utilities on Tuesday thanks to a power outage of about ten hours. By the time the heating system is completely installed there will have to be some type of generator to provide the pump the ability to run.  A generator would also be helpful to insure that items in the refrigerators do not spoil and that there can be a source of lighting for the building.  Much of the building looks like a cavern when the electricity is down.  So there are lots of things to think about when it comes to creating a sustainable venture such as the training center. 

I've finally included a picture of something.  I really like to take pictures, but it is very hard when you are always doing something and then the camera is somewhere else and you don't want to risk breaking it. 

Today is laundry day.  It takes approximately 2 hours to wash a load of clothes about the size of a typical laundry basket.  That's par for the course in this part of the world.  It also looks like the dryer will work today since there is some sun.

People often ask us what they can pray about and we have asked that question ourselves when we were at home. Pray about everything including the routine. Routine tasks take extra effort and time here especially when they involve others. You can usually find a work-around, but that can consume time as well as other precious resources. Many things that we have come to expect as a service simply do not exist such as bags and baggers at grocery stores.  You pay for the former or bring your own and bag it yourself after about a 30-minute wait in line. The list only grows.  For us this is not that much of a problem because we have lived like this 20 years ago on Crete.