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Yesterday I hit one of those mornings when you just don’t want to do it anymore. I’m sixty-four. I can retire now. How nice it would be to stay home and work on my Master’s. I could read, I could write. I could sit down and have a nice cup of tea. I shared this with Pam on the way out the door and she smiled and gently remonstrated. She knows how tired I get some mornings, especially when I am restless and get up at three.

There was not a lot on that day. I stopped to talk to my supervisor about the weekend’s activities and how the center in Raub where we visited yesterday could be the focus of the kind of community outreach we are trying to develop. He was interested, but he has many more things on his plate than what I am trying to do.

So when he mentioned that he wanted me to be part of a meeting that was happening that morning I was more than a little surprised. I gathered my iPad, grateful that I had spent the 150 ringgit for a bluetooth keypad and the ten bucks for the Pages app that makes taking notes with this device a little easier to do, and headed out.

We met in the library with about a dozen others and I soon found out that the key speaker was the young man who had developed a modular housing unit that I had heard so much about since our return. His project group, Epic Homes, has been the focus of a lot of attention, not only here at the university, but nationally as well. These homes can be constructed in a weekend using a minimum of tools and expertise and are much in demand among the Orang Asli.

There is much I could say about the meeting; how pleasant it was to have my contribution to the development of community service acknowledged and recognized; how important it was to meet so many key players in this process in one room. But the key ingredient for me was the take away at the end. I stayed for a moment to talk to the young man who is behind Epic Homes; Johnson is his name. I offered my help to him as one who had some experience in hand and power tools, having taught the subject for 18 years in the early part of my career.

To cut a long story short, it looks as if my expertise in this area is going to be useful in the development of this project among the Orang Asli. He asked me to come on board as a technical advisor. I don’t know how all this is going to work out at this point. All I’m thinking of at the moment is how very indicative of the nature of God to have built these experiences into my life so many years ago. Perhaps the Lord doesn’t want me to retire just yet!