Elephant

Our partner and his family. (((they gave us beef!!!)))
Above: He built his house on stilts to avoid the elephants tearing up their house.
Above: Yes....the footprint of the elephant. I know that I have seen elephants in zoos, etc...but this just seemed ground breaking (no pun intended) to us!!

So, there are a few topics that I would like to cover in this posting. First..the smell of grass. Nick and I were riding the motorcycle on the way to a partner's house today for lunch. He lives about 1 hr. away and it is outside of the city. This was new territory for us. As we were riding, this magnificent smell that I caught took me back about 10-12 yrs...truly. It was the smell of fresh cut grass and I don't know what else. It took me back to when I was so young and summertime. I was out of school and I knew that bedtime was not definite and the sun went down so late. The memories of laying in the grass after my dad cut it...of my mom cooking awesome meals in the kitchen...and having no idea that I would be having that exact same feeling half a world away. As we are approaching our 6 month mark here on the field, I am still amazed at all of the little things that remind of of things from home that I have not remember/thought about for SO long! When I first has this flash back I immediately tried to think of something else due to the fear of only being able to think of how far away home felt at that point...but indeed the Lord delivered me straight from there. He allowed me to feel so incredibly thankful that I had an opportunity to remember that part of my childhood...and how thankful that I get to catch that same smell of fresh cut grass in the summer time here. I know that this probably sounds petty or minute in the big scheme of life...but it was pretty important to me today. God has been and is continually good and faithful to us here. How He has allowed us to live out our lives here in this part of the world.

Okay..so 2nd story!!! As we were walking to our partner's house (this is towards a thick forested area apparently) we start to see these HUGE holes in the ground. Our partner presumed to tell us how a wild elephant came through the village last night and ram-sacked the house that we were passing!!! Craziness!! He said that especially during the monsoon season the elephants will come into the village every night looking for food.