Hi Everyone --

It's been a very uneventful week. We had the JD gal here for her second week, and we did all the things we missed the first week. We picked up her stitching, finished her Christmas shopping (which we were able to do ours as well), ate at the Indian restaurant, had sizzlers, and we even went to Fashion Street. Fashion Street is like a rabbit warren of shops and more shops. The aisles are narrow and you can only walk single file down them. It's really hot in there too. There are probably 150 shops in this one little area. Her driver came in to see if we were ok in there. Things you can find in Fashion Street: jeans, t-shirts, sunglasses, scarves, kids clothes, shoes, western clothes, robes, sandals, towels and sheets, kurtas, luggage, purses, watches and jewelry, etc. It's a crazy place and everyone calls after us, "Madame, jeans!" "Madame, kurtas!" "Madame, chapals!" We really try to stick together and stay on the "main" aisles.

This morning Hannah called down stairs that she needed help upstairs right away. I asked her what tools I needed. She said I needed to bring a dust pan and a broom. I asked her if it was alive or dead. She said dead. Up I went. It was a cockroach! It was on its back with it's legs and feet wiggling in the air. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was probably 2" long and as big as Doug's thumb. The antennae on it were another 1 1/2-2" long. It was pretty large. I scooped it up and showed it to Doug. He said it was a pretty big one. I asked what I should do with it, and he said to throw it out on the terrace. I went back and looked later and it was gone. Hopefully, some bird came and ate it, and it didn't come back into the house.

We had 5 for church today -- us 3 plus 2 Indians. The missionaries and the family from Mumbai didn't come. We had a quiet meeting -- we watched Sunday afternoon General Conference. We will watch our last session next week (Sunday a.m. session).

We are getting our hotels and things arranged for Italy. We still have a bit of work to do on that.

We are also getting our plans in order for our trip to the US in December/January for our visa renewal. It looks like we will be in Waterloo a few days, travel down to Omaha for Christmas, then back to Waterloo. Doug will be working in Waterloo and hopefully our visas will come through with no problems.

I guess that's it for us. We are all fine (Doug is getting a cold again). We are hoping this will all be out of our systems by the time we leave for our trip to Italy. It's no fun to be sick on vacation.

Have a great week!
Love, Lucinda