Life down here has been very busy! Lots of adjustments to be made from country life to school in the city! Although the city still has a country look occasionally. I love seeing the men with carts come into the neighborhoods on foot to sell their wares! I took this picture as he was passing down our street. You will notice the gated house in the background. Here security is a big deal. Everyday we hear new stories of someone being robbed, even in the middle of the day. Our Spanish tutor, who is Tico, has been robbed 6 different times and once at gun point in her 32 years of home ownership. We need 4 different keys to get into our house. Thanks for praying for our safety!
We are slowly getting adjusted and have a pretty good routine now. Up at 5:00am for prayer and breakfast; 7:25am off to school (right now we live 5 minutes from the school); home at 12:30 for lunch a rest and back to the books! We try to get a walk in either before or after the afternoon rains (usually it ends up being 'in' the rain!). Our evenings are spent chatting with our host family, eating and studying. A couple nights a week Bob goes to play basketball at the school. We have started going to a mission outreach in a poor area in the northwestern part of the city. They work with children there and do door to door evangelism. Bob and I had a chance to use our Spanish during the home visits during a 2 hour downpour. It was exciting to be able to communicate a little.
The weekends have been variable. Sometimes we go visit various mission sites and other times we go with our family on their errands. We have enjoyed our trips to the 'feria', which is an open farmers market with hundreds of vendors that would put any in Maine to shame!
The first weekend we were here our host couple got married and we were invited to their wedding! The setting was high up in the mountains with a view of the city below. They had to perform two ceremonies because the one performed in the evangelical church is not recognized by the country as legal! So a notary/justice did the official one.
One of the joys for us is meeting other missionary couples who will be going all over Latin America. Our class at the institute is the largest they have had in several years. We are over 120 new students! God must be getting ready to reap a bigger harvest here in Latin America.
We have been visiting churches to seek one that God would have us go to this year and this Sunday we may have found it. It is a group called 'La Amistad'. It was founded as a Columbian church but it has people from all over. In front of us were some young singles from England and Germany who were doing short term mission in Los Guido. It is only a 15 minute walk from our host home. The worship was beautiful, the people warm and inviting and the outreach focus was what we were looking for in a church. They just happen to be building an outreach church in Los Guido, where we have been a couple of times with a fellow missionary from CTEN, Keith Britton (keithbritton.blogspot.com). We will be helping with this years Christmas party for soup kitchen kids in a nearby community, Los Guiceros.
We have had a chance to visit in Linda Vista a few times. This is the community that we have been doing short term missions at for the past three years. It has wonderful to get to see old friends again. The church there is doing well and we are so encouraged to see their growth over the years. The photo at left is of the Linda Vista community in which the church is located. The homes are draped over a nob on the hillside with only stairs from the top down to access them. The road is located at the top of the picture.
Below is a picture of a man we meet in the mountains while walking from Los Angeles to Linda Vista. He had just gathered some wood for a fire for cooking outside his house. I just love his smile!
