We are always surprised that the Lord continues to bless us in the simplest ways.  The other day we went to visit a few of the members.  Brother Shilo, the Colombo Branch Mission Leader, went with us.  He had never visited in most of the homes that we chose to visit.  He was as lost as we were as we searched for their addresses.  Sushantha drove us to Deliwala and we found Hagobian's address.  Hagobian is a young man that works at the Iraq Embassy here in Sri Lanka.  He was shocked to see us at his gate.  All homes have a fence and locked gate due to the violence in years passed.  Then we headed for the next home. We had a lot of problems finding it.  We finally turned down a lane and drove to the end of the lane.  We didn't see the address we were searching for.  I said a simple prayer in my mind and looked up and there was Dale replacing the light bulb in their outside lamp.  Dale is the teenage son of the family that we were looking for.  You might say that was just a coincidence but I think Heavenly Father was watching out for us and helped a little. We had a lovely visit with the family.  The father, Namal, is 1st counselor in  the district presidency.  His wife, Visaka, is a movie star here in Sri Lanka.  She is also the young women president in the branch.  Rowena, their daughter, is seventeen and is the branch chorister.  Dale, their son, is fourteen.  He is the life of the party when anyone ever has a party.  He is a good kid.  Rowena and Dale both attend our seminary class each week. Shilo knew where the next family lived, so the driver had no problems getting there.  Their son, Vino, just left a few weeks ago to serve a mission in California.  They live in a very small home.  It wasn't much larger than our living room at home.  Wonderful people that have lots of faith. We arrived just in time to see Sister Vinitha take a machete and cut open a green coconut. She held the coconut in her left hand and cut it open.  I was afraid she was going to cut her hand off. Next she took the two parts of the coconut into the kitchen and hooked up a hand grinder to her cutting board and turned the handle and it took out the coconut so quickly.  It was a lot faster than the way I did it a few weeks ago.  On our way home we saw an elephant walking down the road.  Sushantha pulled over so that Elder Meyers could get a picture of him and his handlers.  We assume they were walking to the temple for a Poya Day Celebration.
At church today we were asked to teach three different people.  Our first appointment is scheduled for Friday.  We are excited but a little scared.  Pray hard that the Spirit will guide us as we strive to teach these people.  We will need a translator for most of them. This makes it a lot harder to teach.

Bro Shilo-Branch Mission Leader

Namal, Dale, Rowena and Visaka

Vinitha cleaning out a fresh coconut

A real live elephant!