Starting yesterday we had some major challenges and provisions. Chronological is the best way I can tell this. Probably should be 4 separate posts, but hang on… Wow what a day. Yesterday I took a trip to the Post Office because the Hold order that I removed online still had not caused our mail to be delivered at the house. I found that the Post Office and the Carriers were no longer in the same building so I could not get the mail at that time. They will be delivering the mail on Thursday for me they said as they filled out a Red piece of paper. Driving back home in the downpour, I heard a thump, thump, thump which at first I thought tire, but then realized it was coming from the engine compartment. It stopped as I drove. Car seemed OK to continue home. When I got home I discovered that the serpentine belt had missing portions on it. Ughhh. Not even our van, we are borrowing someone else’s Van! Our vehicles are in Indiana. I showed a friend and he said that it is not as difficult to change as I thought it could be so we decided to get it fixed instead of parking the van and not driving it the rest of the time here in Orlando. The friend even offered to pay for the repairs to bless us and the owner of the van. (Actually he said he was pretty sure God wanted him to pay so this is Provision 1 to Praise God for.) I got up before 7 to go buy a belt for the van and take it to the repair shop. I took a shower and just as I was getting out Karlissa came in reguritating the meal of the night before. Looked like most volume yet in one throw up she has produced. Big streak in her bedroom, down the hall and all over the toilet and bathroom. We are pretty sure it is an intolerance to Onion of some sort. My grandmother, mother and cousin all have some intolerance of Onion. As mom said, “I like onions, but they don’t like me.” We thought Karlissa just had a problem with raw onions after an episode in January and had kept her off of them since then, however last night’s onions were grilled some first, perhaps not enough even though some were blackened. Perhaps it is a quantity of onions in a sitting, day or couple of days thing. Oh well, we will keep looking. Around 9am a man showed up to work on the fireplace as it has not been safe to use since we moved into the house. The chimney sweep was here on Tuesday and he did a fabulous job. Today was the fireplace repairman especially here because the chimney on the house will come off in a tropical storm or hurricane. As he started to work, I took the van in to get fixed, while Crystal and a friend started packing up our books for storage or shipment. The repairmain started in the firebox taking care of the steel that has started to turn color as a precursor to rust, by using a special high temperature black spray paint. Then something happened that had never happened to him before. He didn’t notice the downdraft in the fireplace or he would have placed fans on top of the chimney. My wife and friend needed to leave the room and attempted to seal off the kids hallway and opened up their windows. The next time she entered the room all she saw was a cloud of black in the room. She closed the door and talked to her friend and went back in to check. The cloud had settled on all of the surfaces in the room and in the foyer and in the kitchen and toward the front door, etc. Fortunately the black paint dried in the air and it was dry paint that fell on everything. When I got home from getting the van fixed, Crystal was halfway through mopping the nearly black floor. The repair man was no where to be seen as he went to buy cleaning supplies. His father (the owner of the business) and he came back and started cleaning. They also called an upholstery cleaning company to come and clean the couch, loveseat and rocker. I would say that now 98% of it has been removed. Our children’s feet were still quite black after they came through the house after dinner tonight amidst what we call a clean floor. Crystal’s friend Julie that was here, was another wonderful Provision of God for both the emotional support, the herding of kids and the helping with cleanup efforts. Just her presence helped Crystal immensely. Oh did I mention the other CCC staff that will be living in our house while we are in Australia, started bringing their stuff in while the cloud was settling. Fortunately we know that God is in charge and nothing like this is a suprise for him. As Dr. Bright said since we are God’s servants, and God is in charge that we don’t have any problems, only God has the problems and we are just reponsible to follow his direction. Now it is time to go to bed and see what tomorrow holds. Hopefully it will be uneventful and productive. Oh yeah the mail didn’t come either….but that should be a different story.