We Survived Our First Weekend With the Girls :)

What a first week! For myself and Laura, these first couple of weeks before school starts are probably going to be the craziest we have all year. We are planning English classes for teacher training, as well as doing part of the teacher training ourselves in Spanish. I have joined in on a project that Laura was working on before I got here, redoing all of the score keys and making them more durable for the school year. We have had a lot of planning and homework so far, but it has been good too!

Throughout our year here at the Hacienda, Laura and I are going to alternate having weekends off with the girls' houseparents, Fabricio and Estela. We started that this past weekend, and so Fabricio and Estela went to Quito and we had the girls the whole weekend. It was a very good weekend and we had a lot of fun. Friday night we had all the boys and the replacement houseparents, Carlos and Maritza, come over and we all made pizza together. Saturday morning, we took 11 of the kids with Jerry and Pat to Otavalo, the market town, to get new house shoes for the kids for school. After finding what we needed, we stopped at a park, made sandwiches for lunch, and played on the playground there for a while (and yes, Laura and I played and climbed too :)). Saturday night we took all the kids up to the school and played volleyball and soccer for a few hours. It was so much fun! I have a few bruises on my arms from the volleyball, but I think we came out injury-free otherwise.

This week is more teacher training, although we are cutting down a little bit on the English part of it, because we still have so much to do before the school year starts. We finish up all of our workbooks for teacher training (which I have had to do in Spanish...eeek!) tomorrow and then will concentrate on getting everything physically ready for the first day of school next Monday.

As part of our English training, we have been reading and having a Bible study over Mark every morning. I have really enjoyed this time with the teachers and studying God's word with them. As I am reading Mark, I am seeing a lot of things that I have not noticed before, and am enjoying that very much. The power of Christ just shines through in this book, and it is very convicting as well. Praise God.

Now, off to do more studying in Spanish! I am using this opportunity to learn and improve my Spanish, so that I can form even better relationships with all of the wonderful people surrounding me here. I am praying that God blesses my studies and uses this time to form me, humble me, and help me in reaching out to others.

I love all of you. Thank you for your continued prayer, support, and love that has been showered over me. "By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life." Psalm 42:8