Cori and Nate, chicken news, reluctant upgrades

More updates on Cori and Nate. A very good friend of ours who was a missionary to Ecuador told Nate as he and Cori started deputation not to spend any money on suits. He had found that that is one of the items people supporting you will want to buy for you. Nate listened. Sure enough, a retired missionary couple bought Nate two suits - very nice, very expensive ones. The story behind the purchase is that the wife ordered one suit but she thought her husband wanted to her to buy a gray suit. When it was shipped to them she found out that he had wanted her to order a tan suit - which is what Nate had on the “wish list” the church asked them to give them before the conference. Of course, the wife felt terrible that she had misunderstood and started getting the suit packaged up to return. Whereupon her husband, worried they would not have time to get the return and the new order processes in time for Cori and Nate’s arrival, asked her to go ahead on keep the gray suit and order the tan one also. Nate was pretty pleased. Cori was thrilled. 

Cori and Nate are home now having traveled back from Tennessee after the conference. It won’t be home for much longer - since they will be selling the house soon - but it is home now and I know they were all happy to get there. A particularly fun thing that happened while they were at Pastor Mike’s church is that Savanna took a shine to Pastor Mike. It seems she likes the grandpa types. I can only hope her love for Papi helped with that attachment. It gave Pastor Mike a chance to show off also. He is the type that would love that.

Mama and I have had a couple of chickens die in the last couple weeks so she is starting to get worried. That and they are really off on egg production now. Where we were getting more than a dozen per day and we are down to about 4-5 per day. I do not think we have to worry since several others that raise chickens are getting the same results - other that the deaths we have had. Some of it may stem from the failed integration of the young ones we raised from hatchlings then put with the more mature flock. Chickens, we found out, are not an “inclusive’ species. Rather, they are brutal in protecting their own little flock.

Mama and I are going to start looking for new phones. I loathe the idea since I remember a time when life was much simpler without cell phones; when a house phone - one that hooked up to a land line - would last forty years, vs these new electronic gadgets that wear out even with minimal use in two years or less. I remember when a really nice home phone cost less than $100 and a basic model was practically free. But I also remember that some service plans cost a small fortune - especially for long distance charges. One month when Mama and I were talking every day on a land line I got a bill for $485; which, if I remember right was about what it cost me for texting when Brittany got started with her first cell phone. So it is a toss up of sorts.

What others feel is a liberating convenience, I feel is a tether for convenience. What they feel is a revolution in communication and connectivity, I feel is a thief of our time to develop deep personal relationships and a  task master of our days and nights - causing people to waste hour upon hour of time to imbibe mindless trivia for the sake of feeling a part of something when they are really not.

Nonetheless, I will grudgingly move forward in the norm and try not to sneer to offensively at the salesperson who tells us how wonderful all of this is.