Let's Ride An Elephant In Sri Lanka

We piled back in our bus with the fringe on top and headed a bit down the mountain to a place where for the right price you can ride an elephant. Remembering how the man at the Elephant Orphanage did it we pumped up our courage, but there was absolutely no disappointment when many wanted to stop to buy cashews. Yeah, a short reprieve!

Now notice how this man sits. There is a natural place for one person. His knee fits perfectly between bony shoulder and bony back. Most of us rode double so the second guy is up on that sloping back bone. Easy to slide off even when you don't want to.

Think riding an elephant takes courage? First you have to cross a swinging, almost bridge.

We are holding on tight. Everytime I tried to take a picture the elephant handler got excited and jumped up and down until I had my fingers laced together.

Are we glad we did it? Of course. Is it fun? Somewhat but traveling through the jungle I would recommend a Land rover. An elephant has a side to side motion that you are not prepared to experience. Think a giant land ship. Even after only a short ride when you hit ground again you have a bit of the wobble knees like you get after being on a small boat at sea. Do we
recommend ridding an elephant? If you ever get a chance, go for it ! ! !

A Tradition Begins

This is how one of our Easter traditions started. Our grandmother was a professional candy maker. She and her husband had a store at different times in Salt Lake City. When she was older and alone she worked in a shop in Santa Ana, California. Even though she eventually had to retire because of poor health she would make candy for anyone who asked. They brought her the ingredients and she supplied the work which to some of us looked like magic. Cream and butter and sugar became candy and then friends would then have large batches of fudge, toffee, dipped chocolates and salt water taffy to share as gifts to their family and friends. The only stipulation was they must bring good ingredients for the candy, butter not margarine.

This dear lady knew the importance of "good" ingredients in everything you do to have the right outcome. She was always an example to us of patience and kindness. We loved being with her and we liked the compliments that came when people tasted her candy. "This is as good as See's."

At Easter the dipped chocolates took the form of eggs and our baskets were full. When grandmother was gone on our only choice was to buy our eggs at See's candy and we have ever since.

Easter Sunday

We peaked into the just opened box and saw that one of our children had gifted us with See's Candy. What memories of childhood flooded through our minds when we saw those sweet treats. Thank you , thank you. First we thought of being young and then we remembered blending two sets of traditions as we made a happy family Easter celebration for our children.

Not only did we remember the tastiness of the treats, but the sweetness of blessings. One particular event came to mind as I remembered being young in St. George, Utah on Easter morning. Our father was working in California at the time and would join us later to drive us to our home in California. We all got dressed in typical Sunday Easter outfits and our mother drove us across the desert and down a steep, winding, mountain road to a small town, La Verkin, to attend Easter services. I had lived in this town for awhile as a small child. We had a home there still but had now rented it to a young family. After Church we came out of the building to see that one of the tires on our car was flat. There was lots of help for us and the tire was soon changed. That was nice, but in our hearts we knew that the blessing of that day was that the tire did not blow out as we traveled down the mountain that morning.

This Easter in India was so busy. We started out to Church early to meet visitors. They didn't come. We watched the first conference session until it was about half through then jumped in an auto and traveled across Chennai to be at Church on the other side to attend a baptism between sessions. A young collage age man. After the closing session of conference we traveled to this young man's home to have dinner with his family. You saw the picture of the room where we spoke at the ministry meeting. The young man's living room where we came for dinner was half that size and fourteen of us gathered for dinner. Wonderful food. AND this was my first time to eat with my hand. We have been in India six months now so you might wonder how I put that off so long. It can be done. I only ate with three fingers too instead of the typical five. It works for a slow eater.

This was a long day but not the longest and we had the sweet memory of a baptism that day and a sweets for the tongue waiting at our apartment.

Easter Weekend

We were asked to speak at a special monthly fast and testimony meeting conducted by the man who waits by our apartment and drives an auto. He has talked about his group before. Usually there may be fifteen. This month there were twenty-five or more. I could see seven people sitting outside the door, but there could have been more.

We were in conference at Church and then came here to this special ministry. Their meeting had been going for a half hour when we arrived. There was singing as we came in and then three woman stood one at a time and bore their testimony of how God had blessed their lives. One man translated so we could know the details. Amazing faith!!!!!!!!!! Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is lifting people from despair and helping them to move ahead through difficult lives.

We were presented with beautiful silk wraps as the meeting ended. It is hard to receive a gift when there is so much poverty, but we knew that we had to receive their love. Even harder was to have a woman knee at my feet and ask for a blessing. I took her in my arms and told her I would pray for her and love her like a mother and the Lord would bless her.

The Talk

The man in charge came by with his handouts for the meeting Saturday that we will attend and address. A close look at this photo will allow our children to see the city of their childhood advertised on the other side of the world.

We are only allowed to preach and teach in English so no time to practice a new language. Look closely at the rest of the letter and you will see that we probably couldn't "get" Tamil even if we had time.

A Special Week

Just a bit more time from the Sri Lanka tale to enjoy this week. We stayed up late in the night to listen to General Conference live from Salt Lake City. We will see it delayed on this Saturday and Sunday but it will be tucked in among other things and it was nice to get a head start. Conference is always so tender and meaningful that you hate to see it end. We have baptisms at both building Sunday and will try to figure that out and the day before between conference sessions we will speak at a special ministry meeting . We wondered about teaching to many at one time when we were pondering this mission and this will be the first time that it happens.

On top of other exciting things this week special friends from home sent us Easter "baskets". Very exciting!
We feel the love that came all the way across the ocean and of course nothing tastes as good as the familiar.

A Few More Elephant Shots