26 March 2012 Monday

With Saturday being the Sabbath Day here in Nepal, it doesn’t seem like we get a Sunday. Instead, we have two Mondays. We did talk to Alison a few minutes. She said they had worked in both yards all day. They tilled garden spots. They also put up the trampoline. they kids were happy about that.

We did teach English this morning. It was a review of the things we had gone over so far. In the second class we again had more new women. We had had GC print up ten more student books and we gave them all away today. The second class had 18 women come. That’s plenty. We might see if we can shift some of them into the first class. On the way home, we stopped at the European Bakery to pick up a few things to take with us tomorrow.

We came home and had a sandwich. Then Laxmi, Rukmina and I went down to Bikki’s sister’s store and we bought Kurktha’s. I even bought one and would have bought two, but couldn’t find another one I liked or liked the way it fit. I do want to take a couple home with me.

25 March, 2012 Sunday

We hadn’t been up long when Skype was ringing. It was Elder Brown (wheelchair specialist in Utah). He said he had met my wonderful sisters. They had dropped of quite a few leper bandages. Brown's are coming to Nepal again on Friday to do more wheel chair training. Elder Brown said they are happy to bring the bandages as they have plenty of space. He had also received a letter from Brent and said it was already in his suitcase. He said they are a little worried, they don't have visa’s or their passports back – but they still have a few days. We are anxious for them to come. This is their third trip to Nepal and we always have a good time with them.

We had our weekly chat with Brent. He’s been so faithful talking with us every week, since way back when. We enjoy his calls. We also talked with Chad and Konnie. Things are going well and they are thinking it’s time to get some yard and garden work done. It sounds like spring has arrived in the Rocky Mountains.

I worked on our English lesson for tomorrow. It’s a review of the past lessons and a bit more involved in preparation. There are a number of games and things we need to print up.It will be interesting to see how it goes with a bunch of new women joining our class.

Rakesh was here today and we talked to him about the legal recourse, if any, we have against the school who wrote checks to us for the IRDF refunds for Sajana and Maya.  And the checks bounced. He said that is common here in Nepal. Nepali people work many years and never earn much money. On the other hand, they can scam people, out of several million rupees in various ways. When people don’t get what they paid for or had invested in, they can file a complaint against the person with the police department. The person goes to jail and admits, yes, I am guilty, and then he is sentenced to maybe ten years or so in jail. His sentence is often reduced to five years and he then walks away with a few million rupees and there is nothing anyone can do about it. There is no way in Nepal to track what he might have done with the money, no computers, really no records that would hold up. . . he’s free to spend the money and no one can prove it’s not his. And there’s no way you can make that kind of money doing a honest day’s work. Tempting, huh?

Laxmi went with me and we went to Bimala’s beauty salon and she cut my hair. I don’t know if it’s a little change in the humidity or what, but it seems really curly. Since we are going to be gone a bit these next couple of weeks, I thought I had better get it cut. It feels much better.

We talked to Jason for a little bit. It’s his birthday tomorrow and we wanted to sing Happy Birthday to him. We did – we aren’t the Tabernacle Choir, that for sure. It is hard to believe that he is turning 36 years old. It really doesn’t seem that long ago. . . .