Moving forward

This was a productive week on many fronts.

While I had been waiting to see if the book writing job would come through, I had responded to several other invitations for jobs— one on Upwork, another through LinkedIn. One of them came back with a signed fee agreement and check, so that’s a go. Nice guy. He’s a financial manager looking to gain more clients with an email autoresponder.

The second one is a recruiter— head hunter— who wants a sales deck. He said yes— but so far no $$. Fortunately both of these are fairly quick jobs. But I spent a few stressed out days wondering how I would manage everything.

I had a phone meeting with the book contact in Israel and some of the other people working there. Seems like a nice group of people and I began researching the book and doing some writing this week.

I somehow stumbled on The Urban Monk. He’s a guy who was a Tibetan monk, then did martial arts, and then went into medicine and ran a wellness clinic. I like his low-key holistic approach. I started by watching his movie “Origins” which had great African scenes. Then he sent a 7 day program (www.theurbanmonk.com ) and I probably spent 10 days and didn’t get through it all. I did start with his eating program and felt good and lost weight. I like his exercises for people that sit all day (because I do) and that they are short and effective at waking up the whole body and mind. I encourage you to look at his stuff.

We’ve seen progress at the house. Tom tiled the wall of the small bath that we enlarged. I came back and grouted it. It really blended well with the existing wall tile. He also finished putting in the door frame and door to the bathroom. Funny story. He asked for my help making sure the door was level and lined up. He’d already put a board across the door opening on the inside of the wall, to act as a stop. I went inside the bathroom and shimmed from the inside as Tom did the outside. He put the nails in to secure the door.

“Okay,” he says. “Open the door and see how it goes.” Hmmm. The door opens in. And there is a board across the opening screwed to the wall. Tightly screwed to the wall. Tom hands a screwdriver through the door knob opening. Did I mention the screws were in tightly? I couldn’t move them. There was no way to get me out… or the screw gun into the bathroom. We laughed! We had to take the door out so I could escape. Actually, he handed me the screw gun and I made sure I could take the screws out… and then we started installing the door again.

Tom painted the second bedroom with my second effort. We both liked the result so we went on to paint the hall and the hall closet. In the meantime, Tom painted the bathroom vanity, finished painting all the doors, and started on the kitchen cabinets. We painted the bathroom… so now it’s ready for tiling the floors and the tub surround. I’m really pleased with the way the colors are coming out. And it’s so nice to get a room or closet done and get the shelves back in. You start to see the clutter in the house decreasing. Saturday we rehung the doors. They will get unpinned when the flooring goes down, but for now, they look finished and are out of the way.

We got a new sister missionary this transfer… so they came over to visit and meet us Thursday evening for brownies. Then we got a text as we were finishing up painting on Saturday. The sister training missionaries were in town, could two of them come over for dinner tonight? They texted about 2:30… we checked messages about 4:15…. Um…. Sure! Fortunately I’d planned a pretty quick meal for us. We were able to enlarge it and it worked out well.

It was a good day at church to day. We had testimony meeting, then talked about how to receive revelation and how the gospel of Jesus Christ can turn bitterness into love. It’s a great antidote for our angry world.