We arrived!

Hey!

Yesterday the NLC class all arrived here in Cedar Rapids safe and sound. The majority of the travel was harmonious and the travel that wasn't was a learning experience. There were many demonstrations of God's Law of Adjustment throughout the day, and we all had many stories to tell of travel plans falling into place. The weather was very nice, and we were introduced to our two vans for the weekend, nicknamed Snowball and The Whiner. When we got to Saint Andrews Church, where we're staying, we found a warm and welcoming environment also finding that all of our clothes were trapped "in the flood" and we would have to do without them for the next day. The hypothetical flood was set up by Ed and Jeni, our class leaders, who told us to leave everything in the vans and then locked the vans for the night. It was simulating the floods that the people of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids had to go through - losing their belongings with very little warning and having to make do with what they had available to them. This was only as small taste of the inconvenience which the people had to go through, as we got our belongings back this morning. We discussed the loss which many people went through and how they didn't know when or if they would get anything back. We also looked at pictures of the flooding and devastation, putting our night of no change of clothes and no hairbrush into perspective.



This morning, we had a very meaningful discussion about the lesson, talking deeply about Life and death. It's a bit cloudy today, but that means that hopefully we won't be too hot for our day full of lawn mowing! We will be maintaining 18 lawns of homes in the area, today and next week. You can imagine that with enough rain for a flood the laws are hopping! A lot of what we will do is still shrouded in mystery but we know that will will be putting in dry wall for a couple of days. We are having a great time with allot of lightning bugs at night that make for great entertainment and many nice people for us to support and learn from. It was the first time for most of the West-coasters to see lightening bugs, so they had fun catching them and admiring them. We got a cup of them, releasing them right before bed.



We're having a lot of fun and miss you all back home! Thank you so much to all of our donors - it's so cool that the good going on can be spread all over the country. Also thank you to the practitioners and all the people who have been supporting us and have made our trip so harmonious.

:) Olivia Krishnaswami and Gunther Ott