Negombo
News - December 2003
We’re
Back!!
The third week of a second year in Sri Lanka (God willing)
has just concluded after a wonderful, happy, hectic, social eight weeks at
home--suddenly it feels like we’ve never been away from SL!
We had a GREAT
time at home. It was so good to
catch up with family and friends and to be part of the “home” ecclesial
scene again. Thanks to everyone who
put time aside to see us. We
enjoyed the hospitality of so many and are encouraged by the love and support
given to us. Sadly we only saw some
of our friends once … (and some not at all!).
Time ran out and there are quite a few people who we never managed to
“get back to” or indeed didn’t even manage to catch up with L.
On Monday 24th November at 5.40 pm (20 minutes
later than scheduled) the Singapore Airlines jumbo which we were on trundled
down the runway with at least two fairly sad passengers aboard.
However we cheered significantly when we saw that the menu offered us one
more opportunity to enjoy a piece of red meat!
How fickle can you be? We
both ordered the beef for dinner rather than the stir-fry chicken.
The flight was pretty uneventful but we did note that at 9.30 pm
Melbourne time we were eventually leaving Australia behind, flying over the
coastline at Port Hedland.
We arrived in Singapore with only about 30 minutes to spare
before our flight to Colombo was due to take off. For those of you who have been through Singapore airport
you’ll appreciate that this is a pretty tight turnaround time.
The airport is huge. It took us at
least 15 minutes, walking at quite a quick pace and using every travelator we
came across just to get from our arrival gate to the Colombo departure gate.
We had our eyes peeled for Tim and Sarah Galbraith who had left Melbourne
on Friday 21st on their way to Hyderabad and who had been stranded at
Singapore (inside the airport)! We
believe that they eventually left Singapore on the evening of Tuesday 25th. Tim spotted us and accompanied us to the departure gate
chatting as we walked. Sarah was
elsewhere in the airport looking after the luggage.
Tim and Sarah eventually made it home in the early hours of Wednesday 26th!
Thankfully they had access to their luggage and had been able to get some
sleep and a shower or two! But
living in an airport lounge for four days…..even if it is Singapore, can’t
be too flash!!
Singapore Airlines had us and our luggage landing safely at
the SL International Airport at 0.30am on 25th November –
right on schedule. We spent the
first few days slowly unpacking the luggage and putting the house back into
order again. It was cheering to see
all our special goodies made it safely here including 2 kg of Australian honey,
2.5 kg of plunger coffee, an assortment of homemade jams purchased at the Olivet
Spring Fair, a couple of jars of our favourite pickle, 1 kg of Darrell Lee
liquorice, nibbles such as wasabi peas and nuts, a 2004 Boxer calendar – all
integral parts of the Ken and Dorothy
survival package which makes life here a wee bit more like home.
We reflect though on what might have been!
Had we made the trip to Beechworth as we’d planned early in our
return….we could have had an Ame Ladson fruit cake as well J.
Of course Ken Ladson would have missed out again, but “them’s
the breaks”!! But on this
occasion it was not to be!
The house was unbelievably grubby given it was vacant for
eight weeks. The dust was thick
everywhere and the spiders had been very, very busy. Thankfully the animal in the roof appears to have only struck
once while we were away and it’s disgusting wee landed on a plastic chair and
not on any of the soft furnishings or office equipment; so it was pretty easy to
clean up after it. There was mould
growing in all sorts of unexpected places – e.g. on the backs of the dining
chairs, inside the sandwich maker, on the ironing board – and expected places;
you should have seen the seals on the fridge door, bleah L.
We arrived back into fairly cool weather.
The top temperature we’ve had over the last fortnight has been about 29
degrees and although the humidity is higher than we are used to at home it
hasn’t been too bad as there has been a light breeze on and off which almost
has a refreshing quality to it.
Friday 28th
We headed for Colombo on Friday 28th with a few
tasks in mind including completion of our application for a 12 month Residence
Visa (RV)…………. We didn’t have a good day.
Firstly we went to the ATM to withdraw money to pay for our
residence visas. We each withdrew
Rs 20,000 and the machine short changed Dorothy by Rs 1,000.
(Thankfully the kind and honest person who used the machine next –
after we’d gone – and who got Rs 1,000 more than he’d asked the machine
for, handed the money to the nearby bank and it was returned to us J.)
We then went straight to the Dept of Immigration and entered the Office
marked “Residence Visas” where there were 22 officers in sight of the
counter, four of whom were actually working; the rest were either standing
around chatting or staring blankly ahead. We stood
and waited and waited and waited at the counter until we got tired of waiting. “Go to that guy there,” Ken said, “he’s got the
biggest desk!” It worked, we got
action! He directed us to the
lady with a similar sized desk and we were on our way.
The lady was very nice but pointed out that we were in the wrong
Office, we should have gone to the general counter despite this Office having a
sign reading “Residence Visas” hanging on the door.
To cut a long story short the Dept of Immigration told us
that in order to get a RV under the category of religious workers or clergy
(which obviously is the category under which we sought approval) we needed a
letter of approval from the Ministry of Christian Affairs.
So we headed of there only to be told the Ministry of Christian Affairs
will only issue a letter of approval if the application is supported by either
the Roman Catholic church or the National Christian Council which has seven
mainstream Protestant churches affiliated.
Otherwise there is no letter of recommendation.
So there we were with a one month visa stamped in our passport and it
didn’t look like we would be able to have it extended.
So home we went with long faces and miserable hearts. Surely the Lord has people in this place….why wasn’t He
standing by us, as he did his beloved apostle?
With the Flick of
His Little Finger
By
the time our first weekend came around and there didn’t appear to be much hope
of being granted a visa, we were anticipating that we may have to leave SL as
early as the end of December! It
was a very demoralising and demotivating experience; we found it very hard to
focus on the work that we’d come to do and we very quickly became a pair of
sad sacks. We told Vernon (and
others) about the situation we’d found ourselves in and Vernon, in a very
moving and simple closing prayer to our Sunday meeting, implored our Father
"surely by the flick of your little finger" He could solve our visa
problem. Monday saw us back at the
Dept of Immigration and Vernon’s and our prayers were answered, God flicked
His little finger and we WERE granted a 6 month "visit" or tourist
visa, so we're here to 24th May, God willing.
It was the shortest visit we've ever made to this office (about 45
minutes – normally it takes nearly two hours).
The fellow we saw is the “big boss”; he is the one who actually
approves/does not approve the longer term visas.
He didn't even look at us; he spoke to us merely to ask us to take a seat
and without another word, signed the forms and handed them back to us.
We left hurriedly and when finally we paid over our cash and took
delivery of our passports, both of us felt just a little tearful and ever so
grateful. A prayer of thanksgiving
was offered in our car, before we headed off again to our next stop.
On the Road Again
We’ve now taken our International Licences to one of the
local authorities and have both been given a SL endorsement.
Ken drove quite a few times during our first 12 months but this year (or
part thereof) will see Dorothy’s first driving experience in SL.
The Mission Matters
What’s Been Happening
First?
The Latest Mail Out.
Responses to the latest mail-out are now coming in and
we’ve got cracking and posting out the requested booklets. We prepared letters to approximately 120 people the week
before we left for Oz, post-dated the letters 17 November and Vernon posted them
the week before we arrived back in SL. This
of course meant that we didn’t lose any lead time once we returned.
The 120 people to whom the letters and literature offers are sent are
those who have often responded to similar offers over the last twelve months.
It achieves two purposes. It
provides us with an opportunity to bring a variety of Bible topics to the
attention of the people who are in contact with us and also acts as a filter
which enables us to identify those who are more likely to be responsive to
God’s message. The database
allows us to sort the 900 contacts into various categories of apparent levels on
interest and as a result of this most recent literature offer several have been
moved up into the “aim to visit category” and several have been moved into
the “inactive category”. There’s
been a good response to this last mail; to date there’s been about 30 requests
for the booklet “Why Baptism Really Matters” and the responses are still
coming in good numbers.
Updating the Data
Base
We are now up to date with our data base.
The database difficulties we were experiencing last year struck with a
vengeance in the last few days before we left for Oz and as a result we were not
able to bring our records up to date in September before we left for home
recording the detail of our visits and that of Peter and Yvonne J.
So updating that has been quite a big task.
Translation Program
One great milestone as we left in late September was
picking up two days beforehand, our very first Sinhala language booklet.
It is the English “Christ is Coming” booklet and looks very smart
(some of you will have seen it, as we brought samples home).
But that represents many hours of work, translating, checking and
rechecking, then finally two or three trips to the printer to see draft one,
draft two etc, which incidentally again are read over by our Sinhala readers to
check that the printer hasn’t made a mistake.
But we’re on the way…..well, we thought we were!
There are approximately 20 booklets in the translation pipeline; some are
near completion while others have a long way to go.
However the translation program has ground to a temporary halt as Dunstan,
our local Sinhala literate brother on whom we have relied heavily for the
checking/editing process, has taken up employment while we were in Oz and now
works 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Yes, that’s correct. An 84
hour week!! When one sees
exploitation of that sort, unions sometimes don’t seem too bad after all!!
This of course doesn’t leave him with much time left over so we’re
now hunting around to find someone else who we can work with.
Bible Truth Study
Day – December 8th
The monthly Bible Truth Study Day program continues God willing with the latest being held on December 8th. The program outline included:
· . “God’s Covenants – the promises to David”
· . The Devil and Satan – it was to be “Demons and Evil Spirits – what are they?” [a frequent question here in SL] but it got side-tracked so Demons and Evil Spirits is being held over until next time). (Ken makes his contribution: Actually, it got side tracked by Dorothy who thought, very sensibly, as the four folk present hadn’t heard our previous sessions on the devil and another on satan, that perhaps we should do that first! Good idea, but all my overheads were upstairs and I didn’t really have time to sort them and bring them down….so the session went as a discussion and talk without overheads and notes….in the end it worked well and I’ve got a fully prepared session to do next time on demons!!)
· . “Bible Reading for Enjoyment and Instruction” (workshop)
·
. Bible
Study: “Joseph – An Old Testament type
of Christ”.
For each of the four who attended it was their second
programme. Two had come to the
September programme and the other two to previous sessions earlier in the year.
The September program, the one held just before we left for
Oz, was "simply the best"!! There were 19 in attendance
(including Peter and Yvonne Jansen from Mildura), 12 of whom were contacts and
for six of these it was their first BTSD. The program included a simple
"Bible Study" segment (as compared to first principles and prophecy)
which we thought would be beneficial for our local brethren, but also give our
better contacts a perspective on the Scriptures which they might not get in
their own church. So a study session on the imagery of Father and Son in
the offering of Isaac by Abraham was given. We had a great day – in our
opinion the best BTSD yet. This
month (December) we were way down in numbers in comparison to September but the
interaction was good so we still believe that it is a program worth continuing
with.
Planning our first
round of visits
Now that December’s Bible Truth Study Day is behind us we
plan to be out and about visiting people who live in the Colombo area, and the
hill country once again. In our
next round of visits in mid January, God willing we hope for the first time to
go as far south as Elpitiya to visit Bro Indra and his family (for those of you
who have one of our SL maps Elpitiya is inland from Bentota.
Bentota is on the coast half way between Colombo and the southern tip of
SL). Given we didn’t manage a
visit to Elpitiya last year it is likely that we will also identify and visit
several contacts in the region who we haven’t met before.
Apart from this there are a number of people who we have already caught
up with, we’ve visited some, others have dropped in to see us.
We’ve also had a number of phone calls from contacts welcoming us back
– we were pretty chuffed about thatJ.
Tim and Ruth
Our first lot of visitors for the year to our
home away from home are Tim and Ruth Moore from Perth who arrived on
December 12th and will be in SL for about three weeks.
Tim and Ruth co-ordinate the correspondence Sunday School work and plan
to visit all of the correspondence course Sunday School students and a number of
other contacts. It will be their
second trip to SL; they came in December 2002/January 2003 but we missed them as
we were in India at that time. We
did meet Tim when we visited Perth in early November but we have now met Ruth
for the first time – so it’s been nice putting a face to the name. They and we are already “into it” with our visits and
follow up calls.
Sights
and Sounds
It’s amazing how quickly everyday experiences are
forgotten. We’ve again been
surprised by the diversity of things we see and hear.
The busy chaotic traffic; the dilapidated vehicles; the enormous number
of bicycles and motor bikes often carrying two or more people.
Then there’s the pot holed roads, the busy street vendors, the
cows wandering the roads, enormous parcels being carried by small people and the
never ending noise of the builders, hawkers, roosters, horns, loud speakers,
dogs, various birds, etc. However
there’s been nothing of particular note that we witnessed in the last three
weeks but during the week before we left there were two particularly funny
things we saw that we may or may not have told you about.
They both involved broken down vehicles.
The first was the sight of a broken down tuk-tuk (three
wheeler) being pushed by the driver’s friends.
Tuk-tuks are basically triangular in shape and the front seat normally
only carries the driver though it is wide enough for two people to sit on; the
back seat can take three people in relative “comfort”.
On this particular day the broken down tuk-tuk was being pushed by a
person travelling behind in a second tuk-tuk.
The second tuk-tuk had the driver and his mate (sitting to his left) on
the front seat. The chap on the
left had his left leg stuck out towards the front of the tuk-tuk with his thong
clad foot pushing hard up against the rear of the broken down tuk-tuk as they
drove along and providing the momentum to keep the front tuk-tuk moving.
We guess they were going to push it home or to the local repair shop. They weren’t going particularly fast but certainly quicker
than walking speed.
The other funny sight was a policeman who wasn’t able to
get his motor bike to start and had about three or four school boys running
along behind trying to push start him – we’ve no idea if the bike ever
started or not.
And several months before this there was another funny
sight which we kept forgetting to report. We
were travelling on a country road and came across two chaps in their late
teens/early twenties who were chasing a dog that was running flat chat and
willy-nilly down the road. The dog
had stuck its head into a big clear plastic biscuit barrel but couldn’t get
its head back out. The poor thing
was obviously frightened and didn’t like being chased. It wouldn’t have realised that the blokes were trying
to help it not hurt it and it must have felt pretty vulnerable.
We figure it would eventually have to lie down as it would get both very
thirsty and very hungry. Let’s
just hope it headed “home” and didn’t take refuge somewhere where it
couldn’t be seen.
That’s all for now folks
As you can see it’s been a fairly busy couple of weeks
since we’ve been back. Now that
BTSD is behind us and we’ve caught up on the back log of work to some extent
we’re looking forward to being out and about a bit more.
We’ve had a couple of invitations to visit people in the last week so
they will be on the “list of things to do”.
And we’re hoping to visit a number who we haven’t met before.