Thursday, April 14th, 2011:
So here we are with 27 kids. We were no longer worried about the lack of the helpers as all the little kids were gone. This day was going to be cake.
We started by watching Hook. A classic. We called Pizza Hut and ordered seven large cheese pizzas and then Tricia and I set off to go pick them up, and buy watermelon and ice cream.
From there it’s all a blur. The Pizza Hut is in a mall about 2 km away from Asha. Normally it’s no big deal to get there, you just jump on a rickshaw and that’s that. This time there was no public transportation to speak of.
We walked for about 30 minutes before we started praying. The pizza should be ready, the kids were hungry and we hadn’t even made it to the mall yet. We prayed. And our God is always so faithful. Out of no where a man pulls up on his motorcycle, said, “Ansel Plaza?â€� (the mall that we were heading to) and told us to hop on.
So we did… He speedily got us there and then drove off without saying anything or letting us pay him. It was completely an answer to prayer and Tricia is convinced that he was an angel.
So we get into Pizza Hut and ask to pick up our order and the two workers look at us like we’re crazy. They never actually took our order. We talked to the manager and he said, “okay…15 minutes.â€�
Alright, fine…we’ll go get the other things from the grocery and by the time we’re done with that, the pizza will be ready.
Ice cream, watermelon, cookies…stand in line. Stand in line for a long time. Pizza was ready, so I stood in line and Tricia went and picked up the seven pizzas. Stand in line. After a couple minutes I heard her shouting at me, they guards wouldn’t let her come back into the store with the pizzas and she was the one paying for the groceries, so we switched spots. I got to stand with my seven boxes of pizzas as she stood in line.
10 minutes pass and I hear her shout my name again. The grocery store doesn’t give you plastic bags. By this point we’re just laughing. Thinking on my feet, I went to Pizza Hut and got a couple bags from them and brought them to Tricia.
Finally, we were able to start our descent back.
We thought.
Normally the parking lot of this mall is full of taxis and rickshaw. Not this time. I stood with our box of groceries (they gave us a box for our watermelon) and our seven pizzas and Tricia ran to the middle of this busy street trying to flag…anyone…down.
This took about ten minutes. I remember thinking.. “what has my life come to?â€� when a rickshaw pulls up with Tricia in it. We tell him where we live and he sets off…in the wrong direction. We think that maybe he knows a short cut for a little while…and then we realize that we are going very far in the wrong direction. So we tell him again…and again where we live. He looks at us like “why didn’t you tell me that beforeâ€� and turns the rickshaw around in the middle of traffic and takes off.
He sped off. I was holding the seven pizzas on my lap and every time we would hit a bump in the rode I would literally bounce off my seat. I was positive that the pizzas were going to fly over my head at the next bump. To make everything even more hilarious…the pizza on the bottom of the stack was smashed. So much so that the little plastic ‘barbie tables’ they put in the box had broken through the cardboard. Every time I flew off my seat I would land with the plastic jamming into my leg.
We just laughed.
We get home. With the help of a neighbor kid who jumped into the back of our rickshaw—he scared me half to death, but ended up being able to better communicate with our driver where we lived.
Finally. We’re home. The kids are starving, but we’ve made it.
Pizza and watermelon was served.
We tried to make them have ‘rest’ time after lunch like they would normally…but that wasn’t happening. So we had a dance party with ice cream and cookies instead.
Everything was going great. The kids even started doing their choirs. They had school the next day, so they started washing their school uniforms.
The washing machine is pretty old school…in fact, I have no idea how it works. But we were all just having fun, dancing around…doing laundry…until…
Meena (10) starts screaming. I looked over and somehow, due to faulty washing machine wires and lots of water on the floor, she has electricuted herself. Prem (16) gets the electrical stuff out of her hands and she runs over to me and grabs hold as tight as she could, just screaming.
I saw her hand and all I could do was pray.
Immediately the other girls turn everything off and take the rest of the kids up to the balcony.
Oh Lord. We just pray and pray and hold Meena. We take her the hospital, she calms down and everything ended up being okay.
Her hand is a bit blistered, but I learned that, though electrical shocks suck and hurt, they’re not dangerous and that I have nothing to worry about. (Tell this to Sarma and Sosi.)
We get her home and lay her down and from there everything calmed down. We had prayer time and dinner. Sarma and Sosi (and everyone else) came home on a high from their exhilarating day on the town. They comforted Meena even more, but weren’t too surprised that this happened…they’ve been having electrical problems for awhile.
So there you have it. My life.
Love you.
(I just wanted to take a picture of Amy modeling next to the washing machine. This is what I got. Oh my team.)
