My brother Wolf and his wife Yvonne are continuing their stay in Germany, looking after my dad, who is making good progress in recovery. He has now moved into a permanent care facility in his community of Weltersbach. Please pray for W & Y as they need to work through German red tape on various issues and are not getting much (if any) rest. Wolf is running out of his arthritis medicine due to having to stay longer than anticipated.

In the meantime, brother Ralph came by for a week and worked on our house. I would love to say that he helped us, or that we worked on it together, but the fact is that he did the work, and when I could, I served as tool-hander and apprentice. Also, of course, I drove the truck to buy the materials and rent or buy the necessary equipment. I learned quite a bit, and I was truly amazed by how much he got done in such a short time, including one day when he was laid up because he put out his back. These were some of the bigger things that home owner's insurance wasn't satisfied with that I wouldn't be able to do, such as painting the upstairs windows and sealing the foundation. His business these days is the "Honey-Do" Company, and I hope that Columbia, SC, takes a lot of advantages of his skills and knowledge. It was also fun a week ago when we got together with the "kids" at Nick & Meghan's new house.

Here are a few pictures of the man hard at work.

June and I are plodding away at our various tasks, anticipating a good ISCA meeting. (Don't forget to let me know if you're interested in the Basics of Sanskrit sessions.)

So, here we dabbled a bit in the concrete, next time we'll return to the abstract.