First Miracle

There is an integrated seminary phase built into the program I’m doing and it involves taking classes on biblical subjects. So, having just sat through a class on how to take a personal “quiet time” with God we were given an hour to do just that. Now I’ve been reading the Bible and taking time out for God for the last few years and I average about 3 of these quiet times a week but for the duration of this trip we’re allotted an hour every day to just spend time with God in the Bible and pray.

my quiet time yesterday I felt like it was time to start reading a new book of the Bible because before I went on the DTS I was reading through Judges and I wanted to start fresh somewhere and felt like God was telling me to read the book of John. The verse that stood out when I was reading the first chapter was John 1:50, in this verse Jesus is gathering up his initial group of disciples and speaks a word to Nathaniel telling him that he saw him while he was sitting under a fig tree and knew that he was a man without “guile” and that he wanted him to follow him. Nathaniel replies “Rabbi! You are the son of God, King of Israel!” Obviously Nathaniel thought it was a miracle that Jesus could see him like that and was so moved that he wanted to follow him. Now it doesn’t say this in the Bible but I think that Jesus must have almost rolled his eyes and grinned when He says what He says next in verse 50

“Because I said to you that I saw you under a fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.”

Jesus is like “Oh so that impressed you? Ha, that’s nothing compared to what you’ll see the more you hang out with me.” Alright so here comes the miracle part. If you read the last blog post you know that I’m one of the only people a part of this DTS that doesn’t speak Spanish as my first language and that I’ve been praying that God gives me the language. So, after lunch yesterday I was exhausted and just wanted to go to my room and watch an episode of Dexter on my netbook. So after I watched an episode for some reason I clicked on the Rosette Stone icon on my desktop that hasn’t worked since I torrented it a couple months before I left of the DTS. Now for the life of me I couldn’t get it too work, I couldn’t “crack” the bootlegged version and had just given up, but miraculously when I clicked on it yesterday it totally booted up and ran perfectly, it recognized my computer microphone so I can speak into it and it’ll help me with my pronunciation and the version I have is perfectly hard enough that I’ve started learning useful things right away. I MUST have clicked on this icon before because I remember trying everything trying to get it to work; I have no other way of explaining how it just magically started working. I thought God did a mini miracle when my aunt and uncle sent me a 50 dollar bill that I needed the night before I left of the airport, and I remember that it totally bolstered my faith, but that was like Nathaniel being impressed by Jesus knowing that he was under a fig tree. I can’t wait to see what other things are in store for me.

Here's some more pictures with captions :)

Everyone going out to eat during some free time

Eating my first (and last) empanada of the trip while one of the many Chilean trash cans (I mean dogs) begs for it

We can walk to this beach from our base in about 10 minutes!

Mi gusta la playa, and I also like how you can buy these pizelle like cookies with maple filling (among many other sweets) from all sorts of different sellers that walk up and down the beach. I got a pack of these for about 50 cents American.