Hi Beloved Community, I’m beginning a new thread, because the last one was sooooo long and repetitive, but utterly illuminating. So here are the Crocker’s offerings: When Joe and I were assigned as Area Priors to NY, we followed Fred and Sarah Buss, who resided with the NYRH in Gramercy Park at a facility I believe was provided by the Episcopal Church there. Unbeknownst to us when we said YES to that assignment, the entire NYRH residents had just been “evicted”, and we arrived to find “there is no room at the inn.” Joe’s first move was to work with former NYRH members, like John and Melinda Howell, and LCX colleagues from NY and Philadelphia (where we had been House Priors before reassignment) to find temporary housing in diaspora. For example, our twin sons, then nearly three years old, were shipped off to the care of Galaxy pastor family Gil and Gretchen Horn and another family in his parish in Parsippany, PA. Joe pulled strings with Methodist colleague Max Trowbridge, UMC in Patterson, NJ who found a small, 3 bedroom, post-war Garrison Colonial dwelling into which moved the 20+ members of the NY Religious House, “Temporarily Located in Patterson New Jersey”, as was our subtitle for the next year. Our space design was creative: The unheated attic, housed the First Prior Family, (Joe and me) sleeping on camp cots, in a small alcove on one end. The balance of the open, unheated attic, equipped with bunk beds, was inhabited by all the single men — at that time they included Tom Bergdall, Jim Colvin, Mike Harvey, John Jago, Bob Rammage, and Stan ______ (I cannot remember his last name.) The unheated basement housed the Second and Third Prior Families, Rich and Joanne McCabe, and Melinda and John Howell — separated by a sheet hung from the rafters. The three-bedroom second floor housed 1. Our newest intern family, Paul and Suzanne Frazer; 2. The young boys dorm: Drew Howell, Jon and Ben Crocker 3. The single women’s dorm: Nan Bailey, Debra Eldrige and her daughter Rebecca; Heather Howell and the two little daughters of Bob Rammage. We 23 residents used ONE bathroom on the second floor, and one half-bath on the first floor Each morning we celebrated Daily Office and breakfast collegium in the “livingroom”, which was redesigned as the pre-school when we all left for work/study. Have you ever slept for a whole year on a camp cot? Or shared one bathroom, even an out-house, with 22 others who need to get up and go in the morning? ________________ When the Crockers arrived in Maliwada, we were assigned to the “demonstration house.” Wow, I thought, lucky us! It was a large one-room structure with a tin roof (as I recall), that made it quite hot in the day. But during the day we were working in the village or teaching, so, no problem. Until the night Joe came home LATE from a faculty planning meeting. Our five year-old sons and I were sleeping on straw-filled mats on the floor. Joe snapped on the light — one naked bulb suspended from the rafters — and suddenly I was awakened by a thunderous THUD, right over my head. “Get up! “ he expostulated. “It’s a scorpion!!” Joe had killed it by throwing his shoe! That experiment was swiftly concluded and our family moved into one small room in “the Castle”, similar to those in which pretty much everyone else on staff slept. But….scorpions be gone, Nat Shinn and our boys, Jon and Ben teamed up for something even more nocturnally enlivening” ---frogs in tin cans!! Wait for the next installment!