It's been one week

Well, I’m beginning to write this entry on the evening of 1/12/11, it’s the evening of my seventh day here in Pichilemu and I already feel like I’ve been here forever. In most ways this is a good thing and in other ways it’s a bad thing, let me see if I can explain.

It’s good because I already feel at home here, I know the schedule of the week and my days feel very full. I’ve found an excellent place to pray every morning far away from everyone else, and God is really speaking to me already which I wasn’t expecting to happen so soon. Also I’ve made a lot of “friends”, which is in quotations because our communication is soon limited, however they all genuinely like me and we’ve been able to communicate a lot better than I expected thanks to translators and my developing Spanish. I think it kind of helps that I’m the token white boy and that my style really stands out down here, I get the feeling that I’m kind of a novelty but I’ve been making a big effort to participate in all the group stuff (like the drama classes we’re doing that don’t require any words), and to continue to speak really bad Spanish all the time which everyone seems to like.

On the downside, I feel like I can still listen to whole conversations and not understand what’s being said at all. But I need to remember that I’ve ONLY been here for a week and that you can’t expect to learn a new language that quickly, and that the progress I’ve made in just one week has really impressed me.

Something that God’s been putting on my heart is a desire to pray for my friends in Santa Cruz. If you’re reading this and wondering if God has put YOU on my heart to pray for you, then don’t wonder anymore because you’re on the list. And don’t trip out either, I remember a conversation I had with my first girlfriend after we broke up; I told her that I was praying for her and she got upset because I think she thought that I was implying that she needed help when she thought she didn’t think so. You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that you want me praying for you because I really feel like God’s hearing me right now and that everyday I’m getting closer to Him. It definitely hasn’t all been easy, if you know me then you know that I’m rarely the model Christian, but I just feel like I’ve been killing it since I’ve been here and that the usual condemnation I feel I’m under because of ALL my past mistakes is lifting the more I understand about the gravity of God’s forgiveness and how hard it is for me to accept it.

I've developed a pretty serious $1.50 a day fruit and vegetable habit at this local market. It's crazy how good and inexpensive produce is over here. However the dollar only goes far in certain areas, I can buy fruits, vegetables and eggs for the entire week for the same price as it costs to buy a box of cereal and some almonds... it's weird.

The following photos were taken using the self timer/ 3-shot burst feature of my camera and the gorilla tri-pod I got for Christmas. This is the spot I've hiked to every morning to do my quiet prayer/journal times. Every morning were woken up at 7AM to do them for an hour and this dog follows me all the way up this trail every time. Look at that view!