Trip Update 3

So Wednesday began with...you guessed it! Bread and milk. And then a hurriedly eaten granola bar, pop-tart or one of Eric's green chocolate covered protein bars (tasty, but very disturbing! :o). Then we had our devotional with the people again. Jorge did an amazing job with the 'Thirsting for God' topic. It was incredible!!! God really used him to stir up a 'hurricane' in our midst!

I think this was the day we did our drama...that sunk fast! It was so horrible I can hardly bear to think about it! We put it together late Tuesday night and had not even practiced when we had to perform the next morning - ahhhhhh! The basic plan was that Eric would be our worship leader, Abot and I were on violin, Juanita was on the flute, Jordan was playing guitar, Ody, Chels and Stephanie were on mic and Nando was playing percussion...am I missing anyone? After we all walked in (like divas) Eric started our pretend rehearsal. Because we were all divas, we were supposed to play like divas. He stopped us because it sounded awful (seriously) and asked for less drama. So we played emotionless and he asked for a little more emotion and expression...after a couple more 'tries', well, you get the picture. The really horrible part is that we were supposed to end playing together and with the attitude of a humble servant not wanting to promote ourselves....except we really didn't know how to play together! :o) Oh, it was painful! It was hilarious, because I hadn't thought through the fact that I would have no idea what Eric was instructing us to do because he was speaking in Spanish for their benefit! Oh you should have seen it....or no, you shouldn't have! :o)

And Miguel taught mid-morning on how to lead a worship team rehearsal. He used his new song 'Casa De Adoracion' for practical application, calling some of the people up to play and sing. It was a blast and they learned it so quickly! It's a great song and I can't wait to do it at Metro!

After lunch Miguel, Jordan, Abot, Juanita, Stephanie, Mindy and I went in search of ice cream (alas, the best place for sundaes was a mirage from the first trip). We found some from the place we went to before and bought Tandems and sodas. The flies loved us as much as we loved the ice cream. On the way back, we walked over what I am calling 'Meat Market Bridge'. Guys were lined up the whole way across, some on top of the arch!, and were jumping off into the river. It wasn't very nice to walk through there.

We got home and got cleaned up (this means peeling off layers of sweat-soaked clothing and hanging them to dry so that when you put them back on later on in the trip, they won't stink as much...hopefully.) and worked on gift bags. Unfortunately, 99.99% of our gift bag material was 'lost', so this posed quite a challenge. How do you make 10 gifts from a bunch of band-aids and miscellaneous items? Steph and I found out that God had already put them together by providing us with the perfect amount of what we had! More evidences of grace!

Todd spoke that night on "What's in Your Hand, Moses?" which was excellent!...at least the parts I understood! :o) During worship we sang the song Miguel wrote and some of the younger people responded more freely with dancing as opposed to a more formal and typical response. Quite a few of the people had concerns about this which led to one of the pastors addressing everyone the following day (more details to come).

After the message, I enjoyed getting to hang out with some of the pastors' family we had never met before. They were precious people and some were unsaved, so it was neat to be able to interact with and get to know them. The two children found their way into my heart - beautiful kiddos! The daughter had a smile that would melt your heart and her little brother followed me around for gum or a chupa-chupa. I pray God captures their little hearts!

Once again we headed up to the roof (or 'La Placa') to hang out, I called home (finally!) and found out John Morgan didn't win :o(. Then it was off to bed (wasn't that the night we met Mr. Roach, girls?) to rest up for Thursday, July 26th...

Again, some pictures are from Nando, Ody, Juanita and Jordan...