Deadlines Are Part Of Life

As we arrived at the office this morning we were very surprised to find the gates into the building locked. As we got out of our car and headed in the direction of the main gait, the guard intercepted us and redirected us to a side gate. Since we don't speak much Khmer and he speaks even less English, we were able to understand his hand signals as he showed us a broken key in his hand. I guess that is the drawback to having the building so secured and only one key available. Fortunately they were able to get the lock opened later in the day.

The pressure of so much to do in our office slacked off just a bit today.  It is always a joy to put a face with a name and that happened again today.  We had another visitor to our office that Elder Oveson has called on the phone for the last six months.  He wants to catch up his PEF loan, so we taught him about renewed hope. He dropped out of school and really needs to get back and finish.

We have been encouraged with our biggest project getting traction and receiving a go-ahead from the Area Office. Now we have to wait a few days for the next phase to kick in.

Even with less pressing for Self Reliance and PEF, we face a weekend deadline with preparing for our Institute class and talks for Sunday. Elder Oveson has two talks for Sunday.  We spent quite some time today making preparations and planning. Talks for the International Branch will be in English, with Self Reliance as our subject. We will plan to keep these talks on hand for our just-in-case emergency back-up plan. There have been times we thought we were going to have to talk on a moment's notice. Now we'll have something prepared.

As we considered what pictures we might put together for today's blog post we went back through some of our recent photos. Just this morning we noticed these large snails trying to go over the wall, maybe they were trying to escape. We saw some very beautiful scenery, greenery, flowers, and trees on our recent trip to the Kaits. As we went to see the people who have been becoming more Self Reliant, we were blessed to see some of God's beautiful creations, and we continue to feel greatly blessed!