Again,
this edition of Negombo News has been prepared over a three or four week
period so some of the events have overtaken themselves – but please just
bear with us. We hope you get
the gist of what’s happened and happening!
The
Mission Matters
Life
was very much “Negombo based” over the weeks leading up to late May.
We’ve had some fairly dramatic storms (more about that later)
and the Vesak festival has been in full swing.
Vesak is a Bhuddist festival held over a three-day stretch and
celebrates either Buddha’s birth or his “enlightenment” (whatever that
means—and we’re not sure which!!).
Poya Day (the monthly full moon) fell in the middle of it
and the festival period is celebrated SL wide.
Like Christmas/New Year at home many people take the opportunity at
this time to travel and to enjoy family get togethers etc.
Lots of businesses close and the roads are more congested than usual
though with less reliable bus services.
Vesak has followed hot on the heels of the Tamil/Sinhala New Year
holidays so it created a fairly patchy month or so as far as getting out and
about is concerned. The routine
which we have established of visiting people on Fridays and Saturdays has
been interrupted as most of the people we rang to make arrangements with
have not been available for a couple of weeks.
The festival period is now behind us so we are about to get back into
routine.
The
Second Bible Truth Study Day (BTSD)
However
we did manage to organise our second BTSD.
All those who had attended Tissa’s
baptism on 1 May had requested a Bible Truth Study day and proposed
15th May (Vesak Poya Day). There
were 12 of us present and of course being a public holiday there were no
outlets open at which we could purchase meals so it was again a case of
preparing rice and curries for up to 20 people.
There were a few people whom we had invited to the program but we
hadn’t heard back from them so they had to be included in the catering
numbers (and no, they didn’t turn up). Tissa
brought some deep fried “short eats” that had a mild coconut flavour
which I (Dorothy) thought were to accompany the rice and curry lunch; so
that’s when I served them. Tissa expressed
surprise when he saw me eating one with my rice and curry.
We found out later that they are considered a sweet snack
normally eaten with a cup of tea. Oops.
I guess Tissa’s reaction was similar to the reaction we’d have at
home if our hostess served our home made vanilla slices at the same time as
the roast dinner!
The
program commenced at 10.00 am with two presentations prior to lunch (Christ
– the firstborn of creation [pre-existence of Jesus] and Prophecy –
Nebuchadnezzar’s image). There
were a further two sessions after lunch which were designed as interactive
sessions to ensure everyone stayed awake.
Everyone was allocated to a discussion group and in the first session
asked to look at photocopies of several pages from a Concordance and
investigate the meaning of the words adversary, withstood, resist, etc in an
attempt to reveal the true identify of the Bible “satan”.
In the second session they were asked to consider the practicalities
of what it means to be a Christian in light of a number of issues raised in Matthew
5.
(click back button to come back here!!)
The
exercise using the Concordance was a disaster!
No-one had a clue as to how to use the Concordance despite a brief
explanation so Ken intervened and turned the session into a short
presentation which explained what a concordance is, and how it’s used and
utilised the Bible word “satan” as the demonstration.
So all was not lost in the end!
The
discussion of what it means to be a Christian was a challenge as those
involved were obviously not used to workshop activities and the
“leaders” were at a loss as to how to lead
a discussion. However they did
eventually achieve sufficient consensus to be able to “report back” with
thoughtful answers.
The
Third Bible Truth Study Day
Everyone
seemed to enjoy the day and suggested that we hold a BTSD every Poya Day so
now, as we are about to go to print with this edition of Negombo News, we
are also gearing up for our next BTSD on Saturday 14th June, God
willing. There are a few
people hoping to come who will be travelling long distances so it looks like
we’ll have 13 guests staying overnight on the Saturday night.
We will probably be one or two beds short but at least two of our
potential guests have told us they prefer to sleep on the floor rather than
on beds – so that’ll help the accommodation needs!!
All
up we are expecting about 25 people here for the Study Day.
A
Hard to Answer Bible Question
Probably
the most difficult question asked of us, and one which we were unable to
answer as requested, came up a week ago.
It was “please give a 10 minute summary of the Old Testament
characters (especially the prophets) and their individual messages”.
We couldn’t do it, well not in 10 minutes!!
Is there anyone out there who can?
A ten minute summary please of the lives of Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel,
Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, Obadiah ……….. and of course the lessons we learn
from their lives and the essence of their prophecies.
But we did give an overview of the OT message and have since sent the
contact, a young Buddhist man, a detailed breakdown of each Old and New
Testament book taken from one of the LTRBE seminar series notes.
Phil’s
Here J
We
had been expecting Phil King, Ken’s eldest nephew to join us for a week or
so in June. He left Oz just
before Easter and had been travelling in Bali and Thailand.
Phil changed his plans and arrived here in SL in mid May.
He stayed with us for a few days here in Negombo and then travelled
with us up to the hill country. We
went our separate ways at Kandy on Saturday 31st May as he headed
for the coast and we returned to Negombo via Kurunegala and Alawwa.
We’ve really enjoyed his company and hearing of his experiences in
Bali and Thailand – some of which have been good and others not so good.
It’s been good to catch up on tit-bits from home and to spend
time with him before he heads to the UK for a couple of years.
Phil will be back here for a day or so before leaving for England on
about 17th June.
Two
into One doesn’t go….
One
of our early frustrations (and inefficiencies) was that because we are both
fairly computer literate, invariably we both wanted
access to the PC at the same times. Ken would
be bringing the database up to date and Dorothy would want to get cracking
with the latest Negombo News or
do a mail merge for a literature offer for contacts; there’d be great
frustration. So we put out a
quiet appeal for an “unused” or dormant lap-top.
Our enquiry produced fruit and Matthew Waite located one that no-one
was using (or is someone now looking for it?) and it was delivered by Jenny
when she arrived in early April. We
return it to our generous lender when we go home, God willing in late
September, but it is great to have it.
While one of us is working upstairs, the other can work downstairs.
It has meant that Dorothy can draft letters for literature offers
while Ken’s working on the return letters with booklets enclosed or
Dorothy can do Sunday School preparation from the cd-rom we’ve got while
Ken’s doing his latest lot of Acts class “handout” notes.
So
a very big thank you to Paul and Sue Waite who undertook the hunt for us, a
very big thank you to Matthew Waite for finding one and another very big
thank you to the generous donor and of course to Jenny for lugging it all
the way from Oz.
Experiencing
Cyclone Influenced Weather
We
believe the weather in SL made the papers at home.
During early/mid May there was a cyclone sitting out in southern end
of the Bay of Bengal about 700 km north-west of here.
SL caught the tail end of its fury and suffered huge losses of life
and damage to homes, schools, roads etc.
The toll from the damage was hundreds (perhaps thousands) dead or
missing (we can’t find recent news of official figures), thousands upon
thousands of homes destroyed or damaged and of course even more people
rendered homeless. Most of the
losses have occurred in the southern areas.
Some of the damage has been the result of the wind and rain; some of
it has been because of subsequent landslides. When
more than 14 inches of rain falls within a 24 hour period, landslides are
certain. Much of the area
affected is where the gem mining occurs and the land has been destabilised
as a result of the mining activity. In
some instances whole villages were lost; the landslides swept them away.
Here
in Negombo we experienced about a fortnight of unusual weather.
The wind brought cool air in and dropped the humidity significantly.
One day our thermometer showed a low of 22 degrees and the humidity
was way down; an amazing change from the usual 29 degrees to 31 degrees and
a wonderful relief to our normal sauna type life style. And
when we say “wind” we mean (at times) wind like you have to see to
believe. The gale force winds
were accompanied by torrential rain.
There
was a 24 hour period which was quite sobering evidence of the majesty and
power of our Creator. We've
only seen such pictorials on the TV news, not watching it from our house
balcony! The winds were
extraordinarily powerful, so too the flexibility of the vegetation.
Our only problem was having to mop out water on the top floor that
came in under doors (three times!) as a result of torrential rain simply
hitting the side of the house almost horizontally and then having to wade
(Ken) to the printers for about 300-400 metres thro' flood waters (about 500
mm) deep to get some overheads made up for our Bible Truth Study Day!
We had an exciting 24 hours here.
During
the first torrential downpour (at 10.30 pm) in this three day period Ken
assumed the normal dump would occur through the ceiling onto the
computer and readied himself. Yes, it started to come thro' but not in
the quantity he imagined. As it
started to dribble in, very smug with himself, he mopped it up with MY bath
towel!J
Fortunately I came
upstairs to see what the commotion was about, because behind Ken’s back
there was a deluge flowing across the floor towards the stairs which had
come in under the door to the outside balcony. We stemmed that flow
with squeagies similar to the ones you use at the local garage to clean your
windscreen but much, much bigger and the trusty mop. Finally after
drying out floor and bits and pieces, Ken fell into bed and can remember the
1 am beep on his watch. At 5 am (it seemed like 3 am)
we were woken to howling wind and driving rain against our bedroom
window. Again Ken got up to investigate to make sure all was okay.
Lucky he did, this time a smaller but still significant quantity of water was
forcing its way in from a similar door on the north side of upstairs.
Again, he stopped that and mopped it up. I then joined him to
watch what was simply amazing stuff. You see it in news film clips of
approaching cyclones. I don't think the cyclone came this way or
there'd be flattened palm trees but they were bending amazingly and the rain
was extraordinarily heavy and “horizontal”! The creaking and noise
of it whistling was simply incredible. In the daylight, the only
damage done and visible from “our house” was a number of fairly tall
banana plants at the back of us had simply snapped off about 2 metres
up. There were also a number of
uprooted trees that we saw as we moved around Negombo – but not as many as
in other areas.
“ON
THE ROAD AGAIN”
The Hill Country
We
(Phil King, Ken and Dorothy) left Negombo on Monday 26th May and
headed to Nuwara Eliya in our second hire-car with Ken as chauffeur.
The trip was pretty uneventful – that is if “uneventful” is the
correct word to summarize travel on these deplorable roads with the craziest
of drivers. We stayed in
NE for three nights and spent some time with Raja and Pathma.
This three-day stay included a two hour trip to Badulla (with Raja)
to again visit Ranjan. Ranjan
is determined to learn the truth of the Bible and has been in contact with
Walter and Keren in WA for sometime.
Ranjan,
his daughter and her family live in a comfortable though modest home in a
beautiful semi-rural setting. The
house is at the end of a 500m walking track which takes you through the
front yards of several of the neighbours’ properties – quite a common
set up here in SL. The house is
fairly high up and looks across a valley to the distant hills with the
Badulla township nestled in the valley.
A very peaceful and serene setting but a long way from the shops –
especially as there is no evidence of any transport (public or private).
On our previous visit he invited us to lunch on this occasion.
A Home Cooked
Meal
We
enjoyed a wonderful home cooked Sri Lankan meal – yes rice and curry and
very, very yummy.
In
the truly South Asian manner, Ranjan and his daughter served lunch to us,
their four guests, and didn’t sit and eat with us. This
a most disconcerting experience for us – it’s odd having your hosts
hovering around serving you and postponing their own meal to do so but, as
we say, it is often the way guests are shown hospitality in South Asia.
They share
their home with their four pet cats and the dog.
Unfortunately the cats were determined to share our lunch and made
continued valiant efforts to jump on to our laps and onto the table to
access the food. Poor Ranjan
spent a great deal of his time chasing these demanding creatures out the
back door however the cats zoomed out the back, charged around the side of
the house and jumped in through the “dining room” window right at my (D)
left elbow. It was quite
comical. Thankfully none of the
feline fiends actually made it onto the table other than one which bounced
off the table-top to the floor as it came charging through the window.
Ranjan
is planning on coming to the next Bible Truth Study Day – this will
involve a two hour bus ride to a little town near NE, an overnight train
trip to Colombo (travelling with Raja and Pathma) followed by a further two
hours on the train to travel from Colombo to Negombo – or perhaps he’ll
opt for a 1˝ hour Colombo/Negombo bus ride instead.
He’ll stay with us for the Saturday night and has told us he would
prefer to sleep on the floor rather than on a bed.
He’s a tough cookie, a spritely retired army officer, about 70
years old
Can we Stop?
After
the NE/Badulla leg of the trip we headed to Kandy.
This “homeward” downhill section of the trip was a little more
eventful than the trip there. As
reported in previous editions of NN the hill country includes very steep and
windy roads. There is now
a burnt out bus on the side of the road (a new addition to the scenery since
our previous visit with Jenny) and Phil thought it’d make a great photo.
So we stopped only to find our brakes – which had been making a bit
of a noise – were smoking! After
a twenty-minute “cool down” we hopped back in the car and proceeded to
crawl down the mountain in 1st and 2nd gears.
This helped enormously and we were relieved to arrive safely in Kandy.
Ken took the car to the depot (where
the brake pads had been replaced on our previous hire car) only to
find the depot has been closed L.
But we had no further troubles and arrived home safely a few days
later.
Jumbos Revisited
We
made another visit to the elephant orphanage, this time with Phil and
enjoyed another couple of hours admiring these wonderful beasts.
When we were there with Jenny in April the youngest elephant we saw
was about 4 months old. There’s
been another little one added to the herd.
It was apparently rescued from the jungle when it was only one day
old (and would have been at the orphanage when we were there with Jenny but
must have been kept in a secluded area); it is now two months old and stands
about hip height. It has a
surrogate mum who stays close by; she also plays “mum” to the now five
month old elephant.
These
two junior jumbos are both bottle-fed.
While watching the five month old being fed we had quite a laugh as
it was obviously really enjoying its tucker.
The elephant eagerly awaited the bottle being popped into its mouth
and then proceeded to close its eyes as it drank … and it appeared to nod
off! Once the bottle was empty
the mahout removed it and refilled it with a few more litres of milk.
While this was happening the little elephant continued to stand there
swaying gently with its eyes closed. Once the refilled bottle was put back
into its mouth it briefly snapped out of its dozing state; then its eyes
would roll and the procedure would commence all over again.
We
went down to the river to see them all bathing and I (Dorothy) ended up in
the shallows of the river with one of the larger elephants supposedly
helping the mahout wash this big beast.
The reality is that the mahout had already given it a good hard scrub
and all I was doing was splashing some water over the elephant – and for
that privilege we, of course had to tip the mahout!
But it was worth it – I can now say that I’ve “washed”
an elephant! Yep, there’s an
action shot amongst the photos and please, no “funny” questions about
which of the characters in the photo is the elephant!
How
does a mahout wash an elephant? He
takes the husk of a coconut and rubs the elephant all over; scrubbing very
hard as if his life depended on it – and the elephant obviously enjoys the
rub down.
Dodgem
Cars
On
Sunday 1st June we drove about one hour from Kurunegala to Alawwa
and then a further 1˝ hours on to Negombo.
We are not normally on the road on Sundays – usually we have a full
program at the house. But this
time we were and the “Sunday driver” syndrome is terrifying.
We were very briefly delayed in a queue of traffic manoeuvring past
an accident between a truck (which was on the wrong side of the road) and a
bus which had left the road in an effort to avoid the oncoming truck.
Ten minutes later the car in front of us with mum, dad and
junior (standing on the front seat between his parents) overtook the truck
in front of it. This driver had
just come past the scene of the bus/truck accident and it didn’t seem to
occur to him that driving into the path of an oncoming vehicle is not a good
idea. They came literally
within a hair’s breadth of being involved in a head on collision.
Minutes
later another car overtaking forced the oncoming vehicle off the sealed
surface. There was actually
room on the bitumen for all three vehicles.
But it didn’t seem to dawn on the driver ‘at fault’ that he
should either pull in behind the vehicle he was attempting to overtake or to
at least move sufficiently to the left to allow all three vehicles on the
bitumen (a common way of overtaking here).
These are only two of the numerous incidents we saw.
When
we were nearly home we were almost side swiped for the second time that day
by a car overtaking us in a dangerous situation – this time it was a cop
car!!!
A
recent newspaper item indicated that there were believed to be 5,000
incompetent drivers in Sri Lanka. We
suspect that’s a touch on the conservative side! J
Boy
Scouts’ inspection service….
For
those folk who watched Get Smart
on TV and saw agents 86 and 99 doing battle with KAOS.
Do you remember those scenes where Maxwell Smart under great duress,
told his KAOS captors they were
surrounded by a superior force of heavily armed Control
agents, then when scepticism was evident, he tried another option?
But again when Siegfried didn’t seem too perturbed, Max’s last
line was “how about an angry boy scout”.
Well, we think we’ve found the scriptwriter for Get Smart.
He was definitely a Sri Lankan government official.
Dengue fever is a problem here in SL.
It is carried by mosquito.
The government has decided to crack down on property owners who do
not clear their properties and keep them clean and drain low swamp areas of
stagnant water where mozzies breed. The
crackdown involves inspections of properties and issuing of notices and
fines. Who has been asked to do
it? No, not an angry boy scout:
but the scout movement has been called upon to help!
Well maybe by the time they’ve finished with some property owners
there will be an angry boy scout out there somewhere.
Tickets to India
When
we arrived back in SL in February (following a five week visit to India
chiefly to enable us to renew our SL visas when we re-entered SL) we each
obtained six months visas which expire on 2nd August.
So we’ve now booked tickets which will take us back to India on 2nd
August and then return here again on 26th August for our final
month before we head home at the end of September.
We’ve
now been here for eight months and the time has flown.
Undoubtedly the last four months will go even faster.
The
Local News
We
buy the local paper each day a keep abreast of local news and snippets of
international news. Wednesday 4th
June’s paper carried two articles that took our attention.
We see articles like this every so often.
Article
One
"The
National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERDC) of SL recently
introduced the Lanka Shakti wood gas stove to the local market ....".
"..... known as the NERD
Gasifier stove ..."
This
stove won an innovation award. They may have a great product on their
hands but they sure need a new marketing manager! Can you imagine?
Salesman
to customer: "Good morning
madam, perhaps you’d like to buy a NERD
for your home."!!!
Who's
the nerd?
We
think they should have stayed with the first name the Lanka Shakti wood
gas stove.
Article
Two
“Telephones
at the Maradana police station are dead and has (sic) been so for the past
month. This is because the
telephone lines of this important police station in the hub of Central
Colombo has (sic) been disconnected for failure to settle its phone bills.
This telephone black out is causing serious concern for the residents
…. According to an officer
… they owe Rs 35,000 (Au $550) to
Telecom for the general line. This
is in addition to the amount outstanding for the direct line of the OIC.
….”
A
subsequent article just a day or so ago, says the police station attached to
the nation’s main hospital has also had its phone cut off.
In that case the bill outstanding is Rs500,000 (Au$8,000)!!
That’s
it for now everyone. We’ll
catch up again soon J
… and keep those emails and messages on our message board coming – we
love ’em.
Ken
and Dorothy
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