Blessings from the Lord

Last week was a good one in many ways, filled with blessings from the Lord.
First, here are a couple of mango pictures to help you visualize what I was talking about it the last post. The first picture shows five of the twenty mangoes that I peeled and sliced up on Tuesday to turn into "peach" cobbler.
This second picture is of the mango tree that hangs it's branches over the garage roof, which is connected to my apartment roof. At night the mango tree likes to go bowling (minus the pins) -- it tosses a mango onto the roof, which then rolls down with a classic bowling ball sound. Speaking of the roof, we had a mission team arrive from Oregon last Saturday, some of whom have begun installing a ceiling in my apartment. This is a great blessing, as the temperature inside would go up 10 degrees or so in the late morning and afternoon, and be very slow to go back down even after it cooled off at night. With the insulation and some of the panels now up, the temperature has remained pretty constant -- so far rising only about 2 degrees in the afternoon. There is a HUGE difference between 84 and 94 degrees!!!

We finished up the classes for this semester, and begin Finals tomorrow. Having already reviewed with several of my classes, I was able to invite a guest art teacher who is here on the mission trip to teach in some grades. This set me free to spend more time planning and preparing for the classes I had. On Wednesday night, the Lord laid it on my heart to do an evangelistic "chalk talk" for 10th grade, who had class with me at the last period on Thursday. At first, I said "NO WAY am I doing that." This is something I hadn't done in 6-7 years! Then a simple, but communicative picture began to come to mind. So I said, "But they won't listen. They're all ready for summer break." Well, Thursday morning found me working on the colors for the picture and drawing in the sky and background for the presentation.... and praying that half the class would skip and go home early! But the vast majority didn't. And although a couple did try to be disruptive, when I concluded the chalk art message with a presentation of the Gospel, they were all quiet and attentive. I am praying that having received the Gospel message in different way will plant it firmly into their minds, and that a picture will truly "be worth a thousand words."