Linton's Come to town!!

Elder & Sister Linton are from Portland, Oregon and work in the office at Bangalore. He is the bookkeeper and she is the secretary to the President. Sudakar is a member of 4th branch. Elder Lohat and Elder Allred. We Took the Linton's to look at several of the Elder's apartments.

We had a traffic jam on one of the roads. This guy with the beam on the motorbike was taking up all the room. Most people were trying to stay out of his way so they didn't get beamed!!!! Traffic was stopped for about 10 minutes while everyone figured out what to do. No one yelled or honked their horn. They just politely tried to work their way through the mess. A traffic jam always amazes us at how calmly the people work through the situation. You would never see it happen so nicely in the USA.

I often talk of how nice the women dress. These sisters are carrying 20 bricks on their head or a pan full of sand to the top of a 5 story building. But they look lovely. The sacks on the ground are recycled to become baby swings. They sew some strings onto the sack and tie it to the tree and put the baby in it and give it a push. The baby falls asleep and the mother can continue her work. There are usually 3-4 kids playing in the sand pile. Best playground I've ever seen for a child. I find kids are easily entertained here. Even the kids who spend the whole day on the divider of a busy street seem to understand the rules of what they can do and most of them seem content to be there.
I think it would be nice if our kids could live so basically and without so many frills. It tends to
make better kids. These kids have so much less that it does become sad.

Elder Kasper found this guy who was drilling the tiniest of tiny pearls. Smaller than the smallest piece of rice you have ever seen. He had to get the magnifying glass so we could see he was putting a hole through each pearl so they could string them.

He is using a bow drill by hand. As he goes back and forth his finger touches the water and he touches the drill bit to keep it moist. He does that without missing a bit. I can't even imagine doing this every day of my life.

A closer view of the small small pearl.

This is the end result. 15 strands and 5 strands. It takes something like a year to build the 15 strand necklace. I didn't dare ask the price.