two scoops and two hours

august 15: monday: day 6 (part 2)
al joined us, having finally arrived the evening before. this would be the only complete day that the team was together with all members present. dan would be leaving for bangkok on tuesday evening.

dan and ben planning tours of elephant sanctuaries and botanical gardens?

we had lunch after a really relaxed morning of catching up on stories and journalling... we needed to go down the street to another hotel restaurant because the chef at ours was sick and couldn't come to work that day. (sounded kinda like our driver for the last couple of days, whom we eventually fired.)

the rice served made us laugh. two scoops that were- well- rather voluptuous. i teased ben that his were perkier than mine. sorry, no photo available- too risque!
***

eustace left early in the morning (about 6:00 a.m.) to work on the roof. this approach to missions work differs significantly from the old haiti work trips where westerners would go to haiti, do all the work and then fly home. here, eustace came and mentored the young workers, providing direction and expertise, but empowering them to continue the work after he left.

give a man a fish and he'll have food for the day...
teach a man to fish and he'll have food for a lifetime

sounds like how Jesus worked with his disciples.
***

eustace- man, myth or heatstroke victim?

upon returning from lunch, i went for a quick dip in the ocean before getting into the van to go to the family camp/ pastors' retreat at kabool lanka. i only had a little time because eustace had returned and we were once again simply waiting for the van to come. still- had to make the best of it. eustace had some pretty heavy heatstroke from working all morning. however, even though he appeared ill, he also seemed happy at what his team had accomplished on the roof that morning.
***

notice how ben gives up his own personal drinking water for the team.

somewhere along the thirty-five to forty mile trek that would take us the better part of two hours, as hissing sound started and we found ourselves standing around feeling a bit useless as our driver scurried around trying to assess the cause of the engine coolant that was all over the ground underneath our van.

al, in his infinite wisdom and timing says
'sri lanka math: if you're leaving at 4:00, add two hours'
thanks al.

anyway, it turned out to be just a disconnected hose and so we were on the road again almost as suddenly as we had stopped.
***


arriving at the hotel uddawaththa (totally sounded north american first nations to me...) we were presented with a treat: this was a pretty nice place. it was owned and run by a tea company, so it had some corporate cash evident in its design, contruction and furnishings... still wasn't a western hotel. this one felt more (stylistically) like a bed and breakfast-except of course that they had a bar and a restaurant and a really huge fish (along with some regular ones) in their built-in fishpond.
***

i went for a walk down the highway (because everybody else disappeared upon arrival at the hotel- taking naps or something.) this is rural sri lanka, very different from touristy and somewhat metropolitan by western standards negombo and colombo. suspicious looks, many roadside stands, no shoulder on the road, big buses decorated like circus vehicles at christmas go careening by in an ongoing and endless cross-country rally.

in one area, the air was thick with the smell of sri lankan pot, but i failed to get a buzz... just as well- this trip is supposed to be about serving God.

strange temptation in strange places.