This morning Rusty reads from Galatians 5.6 where Paul says that no longer is it proof of our Jewish-ness or any other-ness that matters, but "faith expressing itself in love." Rusty says that our electronically connected social media world faded away out at the oyster farm with no cell phone reception. Then he mused that being disconnected from the web might actually help us to connect to "God's network"--"faith expressing itself in love" for people who really need to see that love. Next we go around the room sharing lessons and impressions. Holly says that for some reason here (less distractions?), when things pause for a moment, her mind goes directly to meditating on God. Without actually meaning to; it just happens. Chad reads from 2 Corinthians 1.3-7 where Paul writes about "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. . .if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted it is for your comfort." Paul is redirecting our minds away from ourselves, outward toward others. Chad also mentioned that Jennifer had a positive time meeting with the wife of Osano-san, the owner of the apartments where Beth lives. Eric later told me that (Mrs.) Osano-san was just blown away that anyone would move us here just to stand alongside the people of Ishinomaki. Chad prayed that God would continue to lead us to "persons of peace" (Luke 10.5-6) who are open and respected, where-ever they may be found, leaders of families, neighborhoods, or companies.
Because of the rain, the oyster farm is on hold again, so it's back to cleanup projects, except Jonathan, Stan and I tackle the linoleum floor installation at Eric and Sue's house. (Technically, it's Andy and Lorna Gilbert's house, who are with Global Reach; the Takamotos are staying there while waiting to have a pre-fab house built on a vacant lot.) A lot of the screw heads are still sticking up above the plywood so I remove them, countersink the holes, and reinsert them. Jonathan and Stan go to buy patching, an electric sander, and sandpaper. When they come back the screwheads are ready for patching and sanding.
The rooms are 9' X 9' and 9' X 12' but the linoleum comes in 7 ft wide rolls, so each room takes approximately 1 1/2 strips. We precut our first strip oversize, pre-fit it by laying it out, then fold it in half and start spreading the glue. So we have these small four inch spreaders but they have large size teeth instead of small. Well, the problem becomes real obvious, because we're using up the adhesive like crazy. Jonathan goes to buy more glue, so now it's Stan and I for most of the rest of the day. But when we lay the flooring back down we have all these lumpy hills that refuse to flatten out. So we pull it back up, scrape off about two-thirds of the glue and when we lay it back down it looks better. Trim one end of the linoleum to the edge of the room, then spread the glue and lay down the other end and our jaws drop because it's three inches too short; we'd lined up the guide mark with the wrong side of the post.
Well, duly humbled, we retrieve the scrap from the other end and fit it in at the short end and the pattern mostly matches and our day is over and it's not our best job and should we 'fess up to our mistake? but we did learn that slippers (the kind you wear inside the house) make good smoothers for getting lumps and bubbles out. (the picture I'm posting is actually of Stan and Chris and me from the next day.)
To make up for this being such a relatively uninteresting blog, I'm including a few pictures from Wednesday when we babysat the kids while the leaders had a planning meeting.
No comments:
Post a Comment