Hi Everyone --

It's hard to believe another week has gone by!

We had 9 at church today -- they were all our members plus 2 non-members that have been taught by the missionaries. We had a good lesson on obedience, and our "Worship Service" was on obedience as well. Everyone thought I had preplanned that, but it was just the luck of the draw.

Yesterday, Doug went hiking up to a fort. He left the house at 7 a.m. and got back at 3 p.m. and it was still HOT. He said it was hard to find the trail, until he realized he only needed to follow the potato chip bags that followed right along side it. This is the same place he went last summer when Hannah and I were in the US and he didn't have a camera. It was dry this time, even though we had lots of thunderstorms the night before.

We had people from Waterloo John Deere here this week. We all went out with Doug's boss for dinner. It was nice, and he answered lots of questions concerning our future here in India. Unfortunately, no time table exists, but we will definitely go home some time! I also got called on to do some shopping for the guys. They come here and work so hard that there is no time to go out and pick up anything. I was happy to do that and got everything they were looking for.

I spent a couple of afternoons at the tech center (John Deere) working with the travel desk to get our China visas worked out. They needed about 10 sets of documents before they could submit them to the embassy -- passports, pictures, forms, 3 mo. of paycheck stubs, 6 mo. of bank statements, 3 years of income tax papers, proof of address, confirmed airplane tickets, itinerary, confirmed hotel reservations on hotel letterhead, Doug's employment contract, etc. etc. This is only for a "tourist" visa, not a "business" visa. I had passport size photos, but they were the wrong size. We had to go out and get them taken again -- 35 mm by 45 mm, white background, matte finish, head filling 80% of the photo, ears showing. Hopefully the packet was sent on Friday or Saturday and the five business days to process will start on Monday. Our new travel dates are April 8-19. Our best flight was on Emirates Air, so our flight goes through Dubai. I know, that seems like the wrong direction, but that was our least expensive choice. The time is 14-16 hours for a 5-6 hour flight. Oh well, I guess we'll get to see the airport in Dubai and maybe even get our passports stamped just for fun.

Saturday night I think we were getting a bit homesick -- Instead of going out to dinner, Doug and Hannah went to the bookstore and bought a VCD and I ordered pizza delivery from Papa John's and we had Snickers milkshakes. It was nice to have a fun American dinner in!

I guess that's about all that is going on here. We stay busy and we've been healthy!
Love, Lucinda