It’s always Autumn in England

I made it back to America last night. It was FREEZING! The weather in Costa Rica had been around 70-75F (18-22C) all week. It is about 5F yesterday, which is -16C. What a shock.

Anyway, just wanted to thank you all for your prayers and emails while I was gone. I will try to send out an email update this week. There is just so much that happened, it was a great week! I will add more pictures to Facebook too. Feel free to read the blog we wrote while we were gone: http://loveatworkincostarica.blogspot.com

Please pray for our team here in Costa Rica. Three people have been sick today. One had eaten something bad, one person was severly dehydrated and the third had a mild allergic reaction. Please pray for safety and health for the team. Also pray that the three men who are sick would recover quickly.

Other than that, we are making progress on the houses. We put the walls and roofs on one house today and laid the foundations on three houses. Tomorrow we will put the walls up on at least 2 houses and hopefully 3.

I have emailed many of you, so I won’t repeat exactly what I wrote, but our team arrived safely in Costa Rica with few hiccups. Only 1 person missed a flight, but he was able to get on a later flight and made it safe and sound. Today we spent several hours building houses. I spent the majority of my time hauling stuff from the church building to the house where they needed material. I am tired. The houses are on a hill, and there isn’t a road like we imagine. It is dirt, but with deep ditches, holes, large stones, etc. Hard to walk on and immposible to get a car up. I didn’t take any pictures today, but I will try to get my camera out tomorrow and get some taken. I am exhausted, so I plan on taking a shower and heading to bed! If you want to receive the emails I am trying to send out daily, leave a comment and give me your email address. One of the reasons you may not be getting an email from me, is that I am using my work laptop and so I don’t have my home email addresses.

Since at least 3 people have called me about my car post, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that I am absolutely fine! As I was driving from Indy, north to Lafayette, I noticed traffic slowing down. I had already been told by several people that the weather is always worse in Lafayette than in Indy, so I was prepared.

When I got onto 52 (which I take instead of 65), there was more snow on the roads, but mostly I noticed the wind was a lot worse. So, I slowed down considerably, staying with the flow of traffic. Just as I got to State Road 28, which is where I get off of 52, as I got to a ‘bridge’ (it’s small) there was a big gust of wind, and my car starting going sideways. I saw the guard rail and knew I was going to hit it. I tried to tap my brakes, but I realised I was starting to swerve, so I let off the brakes. I hit the guard rail, which then spun me some more, but I landed about 10 feet ahead in the grass verge.

Traffic was clear, so I tried once to see if I could easily get back on the road, but it was pretty slick. Before I could do anything else, a police car pulled over, and he offered to get the car back on the road safely. I let him do that, and then we drove to a parking lot just a few yards ahead and he did a report. I was then on my way and home about 20 minutes later.

Tuesday morning I heard there were over a 100 accidents in Lafayette and Angela told me there were 50+ in Madison County. I took my car in for an estimate and there was just over $4000 of damage…thank goodness for insurance!! But, thankfully, I am safe and I am not even sore. My car is a little worse for wear, but it is driveable. The high cost of repairs is because I managed to damage every single panel on the passenger side! I figure there is no point in doing things by half measure…might as well go all out!

Here are a couple pictures I took with my NEW DIGITAL CAMERA!!!!

It snowed Sunday and Monday.

On my way home from work last night, the weather changed very quickly and roads froze before the gritting trucks got out. On I-65, there was a 4 semi (lorry) pile up. In Lafayette there were 110 accidents. I was one of those.

I hit a sheet of ice and my car just slid to the side into the guard rail on the side of the road. Fortunately, that was all that happened, and I was able to drive away a few minutes later becuase a police car happened to be right behind me and did the report within 10 minutes.

This morning, they have actually closed 2 of the roads I drive on on my way to work. I’m not going to risk it!

UPDATE: The damage to the car will take about 8-10 days to repair. I plan to take it in while I am in Costa Rica.