Jeff, The Mole War, and Simon

Our gardener, Jeff, was finally able to visit us today.  He has suffered a back injury and some family losses.  But he seems back on the job now, and he talked to us about the moles.  He said all the hills in the garden were probably from one mole.  They seem to be very active all around the area - probably has to do with the weather.  Anyhow, he fixed the hills, as you can see from the photos.  I think he likes to put something that smells bad to the moles in their holes to encourage them to leave.

We went to the local health centre this afternoon to sign up for the National Health System.  While we were at the clinic, there was a man there in a wheel chair with something wrong with his lower left leg - some kind of break.  He had that metal frame around his leg with pins going into it - you've seen them.  He asked one of the nurses for some water, but they did not have any to provide for him.  Afterwards, he sat there, obviously in a good deal of pain.  I told him I overheard his conversation and offered to go get him some water.  He accepted and thankfully the pharmacy next door had some bottled water, so it was a quick and easy thing to do.  This lead to our having a good discussion with him, of course.  His name is Simon.  He smashed his ankle in a biking accident.  He lives near us.  We wound up exchanging names and numbers because he is looking for some kind of desk work to do until his leg heals up.  So, I plan to check back up on him in a few weeks.  We can pray that somehow we may be able to go beyond deed and share with him the word of the gospel at some future date.

We have a new scholar coming in this weekend to speak at the C. S. Lewis Society meeting Tuesday night.  We also have a missionary couple from Germany coming in for a few days as guests of their father/father-in-law, a scholar here.  Looks like a busy next few days.

This is what it looks like under the mole hills.

The hills are down - hopefully the mole is encouraged to dig elsewhere.  We shall see!