As it’s doing as I write this, though it’s not pouring. A soft rain, as the song goes (one of my favorites):
Rain falls, soft rain at my window.
Every butterfly has hurried away,
All the honey bees have called it a day,
And the columbine are bending their heads in the rain.
Rain falls, soft rain making puddles.
For the children’s feet the puddles are sweet,
And the skeeter bug fleet finds the small pools a treat,
And the columbine are bending their heads in the rain.
[Chorus]
While the rain is falling there’s a quiet hush about the world.
While the thunder is calling there’s a quietness about the world.
A time to remember the beautiful things,
To look for tomorrow and your fondest dreams.
As Taunya wrote in a recent post, we like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain. There is a silver lining in the clouds. A bright side that keeps our hopes up, looking for the good and beautiful things we keep finding each day we are here.
After a relatively quiet week, this week things started getting busy again. Pouring, even, you might say!
On Monday we went to see Krishna and Santosh, our friends at the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation. We had a frank discussion about their hopes and dreams as they relate to financial support from LDS Charities. They have some very ambitious goals, but their heart is as large as their vision. We hope to be able to help them realize their dream of building a facility where people can come to receive hands-on training on biodynamic and organic farming — a much better way than prevalent practice. Their organization is very well suited to provide this training, but a new building is a pricey proposition, so getting approval will be a challenge!
On Tuesday we walked to an architectural delight, Dwarika’s Hotel, which we have walked by many times on our morning walks. We had lunch at one of the many restaurants there, splurging on pan-seared salmon for me and a delicious quinoa salad for Taunya. The occasion? Celebrating our mission one-year anniversary! It’s hard to believe how fast time has flown, and that a mere six months remain!
Wednesday saw us travel to the same school and on the same bad road we took in July to visit the school that LDS Charities funded the rebuilding of after the 2015 earthquake. We did not get stuck this time, thank goodness!
The occasion was the handover ceremony and ribbon cutting for the new computer lab (15 desktop computers) and a small playground set for the schoolchildren. These items were purchased using a small amount of leftover funds from the building project. It was quite the ceremony, with guests ranging from the founder of the school to the (possible) future prime minister of Nepal! (Even yours truly got to speak!)
On Thursday, while Taunya attended a Primary activity, I went grocery shopping with just Manoj. Although I missed my expert shopping companion (Manoj is an excellent driver, but has nothing to opine about our food preferences — which are radically different from his) I think I did pretty well with the list Taunya gave me!
On Friday, the idea occurred to me to create a Keyboarding Progress Assessment Sign-up Sheet and run it by the branch president — all of whose kids are learning piano — who gave it the thumbs up. This was an experiment to see if we could more easily meet one-on-one with our students remotely to see how they did with their assignment from last week. Well, yesterday afternoon we only met with two students (the younger two of the branch president’s bunch), and needless to say there were technical difficulties. Zoom with a shaky internet connection, not so fun. The video and audio were not in sync. The one holding the phone pointing the camera at the other’s hands on the keyboard could not hold it still. Jittery video and lagging audio are a bad combination. But it was an experiment, and now we know that remote piano lessons are way less than ideal. We suspected as much, but there’s no substitute for experience!
Why didn’t we just continue as we were doing? As in last week, while Taunya was teaching a group lesson, we had the students individually come one-at-a-time to have me watch them play their assignment, and assess their mastery of it. The reason is the need to start practicing to have some choir music ready by Christmas! Instead of regular music lessons we’ll have choir practice right after church, but since we don’t want to lose momentum with the lessons we’ve been giving, it will just be every other week, until it is needful to practice every week!
So yesterday we had choir practice. It became very obvious that there will be no choral singing (with parts) from this group of budding but experienced-singing-melody-only singers! We may do some small ensembles using our American embassy people who do have experience singing a harmony part, some solos, and instrumental numbers. A Christmas program with heart, if not joyous harmonious tonal texture!
Speaking of musical delights, I have a wonderfully fond memory from my college days in the 70s of singing in a double-mixed quartet the song I started this post with. I remember one time while performing it having a moving spiritual experience, as we slowly (reverently even) sang the last verse:
Rain falls, soft rain at my window.
I will go outside where the sleepy rain blows,
Feel the wet on my face, feel the wet on my clothes;
And like the columbine I want to bow my head in the rain.
Barring extreme weather events, may the “rain on [our] face” (among many other good things) always make us “glad that [we] live in this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for [us]!”
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