Visiting

Christ for the City staff

Yesterday we spent a lot of time visiting our friends. First, the two young women who are the Christ for the City staff here in town were at the center getting it ready for the next school year. This is summer break here. The new school year starts February 10th. They were cleaning out the house, checking the computers, and passing out announcements about summer camp, which will be the first week in February. This time we are not going because we won't be here. One of the girls is a local, but the other one is an American. Last month she married the local girl's cousin. He happens to work in the computer field, so he was working on the computers. We sat on the porch and talked to the girls for a long time because we had a lot of catching up to do. We haven't seen them since we were here last time in June. This is the heavy traffic we encountered after leaving Christ for the City.

Traffic jam

We then visited our friends, the little boy's parents, because they were both home from work. Since most people here work in the tourist industry, their schedule is not 8-5 as in the States. We played with the little boy for a while and talked about the couples event this Saturday. He has a list of those who have attended before and is contacting them to confirm whether they are coming or not because we have to turn the list into Security for them to be allowed in the Hacienda. From their house we went to the other couple's house who is also helping out with the event. We gave them the list and they brain-stormed about other couples that they might invite. Remember these two couples in your prayers. Their help is invaluable in order to get the event together, but they are not yet believers. All four of them work here in the Hacienda.

After that visit we went still to another house. This young couple don't have any children yet. They have attended our events and were moved to get married because of what they learned last year. (They were living together.) They are very cute together, very friendly. It turns out that they live with his mother. Actually, they live in about one half acre lot with all of his brothers and one sister. They have different houses, but all live very close. The mother-in-law has attended church. Because of her work schedule, she can only attend on Thursday evenings, so she told me that she would be there today. They served us coffee and cookies, and John had some coffee. I was so proud of him! This is only the second time in our married life that he has tasted coffee. There is another couple we know who lives on the same block; therefore, we walked to that house to see if anybody was home. We have heard rumors about their marriage, but since they are rumors, we haven't said anything to them. They have never attended our events, although they claim to be believers, they have never attended our church. The wife was home, and we chatted for a little while. I invited her to church tonight. We had left home at eleven in the morning, and it was 4:00 by the time we drove back home. We were hot and tired.

Today I got up early and started cooking lasagna. Unfortunately, I could not find either ricotta or cottage cheese. (Rubia, I needed 3 lbs of ricotta for the amount of lasagna I am making. I only had half a gallon of milk on hand, so I decided to skip trying to make ricotta, but I will bring cheesecloth from home next time. I will be ready if this happens again. Thanks for the recipe!) Since I did not have ricotta cheese, I decided to double the wine. It never hurts to add more flavor. I'll let you know how the couples like it this time. So, I started cooking at 7:00 am this morning. It is 2:00 pm and I just finished cleaning up. I do more cooking here that I ever do back home. 

Carlos and Rosario will arrive tomorrow morning from the capital. The reason we are having the event this weekend was so that they could come and spend a few days relaxing. Well, it happened that Carlos made a mistake on his agenda, and he has to do a wedding this Sunday morning; therefore, they are going to leave back for the capital, a five hour drive, right after the event Saturday night. Please pray for traveling mercies for them!

I will be busy the next few days, so you won´t hear from me until Sunday or Monday.

Until then...from the beach...