What do you do when it is really hot and you have no a/c-it is not what you think

So temperatures here continue to be in the 90s with high humidity though we have not had any rain this week.  As I mentioned before I am forgoing the refrigerator so I can have power for the fan at night.  Yes I understand the physics of a fan blowing hot air around but moving hot air is better than static hot air, at least mentally.

So what does one do when it is this hot all the time, because it is this hot for most of the year.  Well let me preface this by saying I am not normal and leave it at that.

First up is I bake bread in the house.  I purchased an camping oven because it folds up, fits in the luggage and can be used to bake items as well as recycle plastic (another blog).  Unlike ovens in one's house it is not insulated to keep the heat internal so it heats up the house a good bit.  However I am having trouble keeping the bread from molding and I am making some in the house.  So far I have only done the no yeast style bread and one thing I can say for sure, it tasted a lot better when I had true measuring utensils instead of guess it cups.  I think I put in too much baking soda and salt.  It was not bad, I ate the whole thing over a weekend.  But it was not as good as the bread I used to make when I was a kid.

It is difficult to hold a temperature using a gas burner in a simple oven.  I kept it within about 40 degrees most of the time.  I am going to keep going for it.  I want to eventually make pretzels with cinnamon and fake sugar to give the staff.  Only I will probably only be able to bake one at a time in something this small.

With the windows and door open I think the house temperature still increased about 15 degrees.  

Another thing we do is work on busted plumbing lines.  Does not sound that bad right?  Only here they do not sell fittings like couplings.  So you make a fire and use the coals to heat up one piece of  pipe and then you insert the other piece of  pipe into it and force the hot version to stretch to accommodate the new pipe.  This means in the 90 plus heat and of course bright sunlight that day you huddle over hot burning coals for hours because this method typically requires at least 3 tries to get a semi non leaking bond.

At least the hot moving air feels cooler after doing things like this and having hot tea to drink.  A lot of other things are going on as well.  In case you missed it we celebrated World Read Aloud by having our students read aloud my unpublished children's book, Barnabas Bear Makes a Difference to the younger students.  We split it up to 10 parts and let 5 each from Standard I and Standard II participate while one held Barnabas Bear.

We continue to do the "Reading with Barnabas" program, though now we have the cabinets in finally so the TV is installed in the rooms of the preschool.

The teachers have even gotten into trying to act out devotional stories on a regular basis.  Here is Simoni being Moses in the basket going down the river to Pharaoh's daughter.

We also got a wonderful gift from the Deborah Circle at Mauldin UMC.  A new printer which uses a lot less ink and therefore is much more friendly to the operating budget.

Sometimes you have to take comfort in the small things.  I have been looking for a way to keep my utensils clean.  Even though this house does not have all the critters in it the house at my previous ministry had, bugs get in pretty easy because there is no caulk on the windows and just general construction techniques like that.  So any container to put my knives, forks and spoons in that was not sealed pretty much meant insects were on them and I had to wash them constantly.  That is from me the person who can normally not give two cents about how clean something he is eating is.  The problem were the knives, they were too tall to fit in most containers.  Well thank you to Dad and his love of Mixed Nuts.