Water and other events

Well, we've had quite a bit going on lately. Just for kicks, I took the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale test (which rates a variety of life events such as job change, death of a family member, illness, etc...on a point scale) the other night just to see where I rated and found I was well over 300 points. Actually, I came in at 321, which places me in the "severe life crisis" area with a 79% chance of a major health change. Interesting.

Anyway, we've been working hard to get into the house. We've given up on finishing and are hoping at this point to make it livable. One of the last big items we've been struggling to complete is our septic system. Last Tuesday we finally found a backhoe to come out and dig the pit. The next day I drove to all three hardware stores trying to find the right type of rock to put in the drainfield. Non of the stores had anything. I finally tracked down a trucking company and was able to have a load delivered. Now, our house is on the other side of a very steep hill that basically requires a four wheel drive just to climb. Because of this, the truck had to drop the rocks at the bottom of the hill which meant that we had to haul around 12 cubic meters of boulders over the hill, one truck-load at a time in our pick-up. We spent three days working on this and still aren't done. The day after the back-hoe dug the hole, the sides caved in. We worked on that all day the following day and got it opened back up again only to have another day and a half of torrential downpours fill the hole with water and mud. Yesterday, we started over again. It is incredibly difficult to get anything completed here.

Thankfully, things are going well with the skatepark and with our church. We had our monthly cookout on Friday night and there were quite a few youth that showed up in spite of the rain. At one point, the winds and rain were so hard that the movie screen blew down and we were all huddled against the office door trying to keep dry. At least the food was good. Church continues to go well as we work our way through Romans. Tonight we'll be watching a movie about the events that took place in Rwanda several years back called "Beyond the Gates" Two weeks ago we studied in Romans Chapter 5 and took some time to specifically talk about Paul's words regarding sin and grace. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Tonight, we'll talk some about the existence of true evil while we watch the evidence of God's grace in the midst of horrific events. It is a great movie and truly illustrates this point.

Next week, more work trying to get moved in. We could really use some prayer in this as our next door neighbor continues to make threats towards me (which is another stressor that I don't need at the moment). Thanks for following along with us.