Mixed Bag

So I cracked open my Bible the day after I wrote the previous blog post and this these verses were from the chapter I was on.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 & 14

“Don’t say ‘Why is it that the former days were better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.”

“In the days of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not discover anything that will be after him.”

Definitely something I needed to hear, especially after writing that bit describing an average week in Santa Cruz. Today was really good and I “felt” like God was speaking to me in a number of different ways, let’s see if I can convince any of you :)

First and foremost is that never once since I’ve been here can I complain about the team of 16 that I’m on and that’s pretty incredible. This morning everyone greeted me so enthusiastically and authentically that I couldn’t have stayed in a bad mood if I wanted too. I’m really seeing God’s love through these people who in my opinion shouldn’t be treating me so nicely. I mean I can’t easily talk with them but still they try and converse with me, they never give up trying to have conversations with me and they don’t get frustrated when it takes us 10 minutes to exchange some simple conversation, they really are an exceptionally group of people and it’s making me feel like I’m supposed to be here. For some reason this fact stood out today as something Gd was using to remind me that I should be here.

When I was doing me work duty today I got to have a conversation with one of my team member’s name Alma, she’s my age, from Ecuador, and works in Social Worker. Without prompting she starting asking me my opinion on the lesson we’d just gotten in class. Next thing I know Alma, Jimenah, and I are all talking about what we like and don’t like the recent classes we’ve taken and between the three can help each other form sentences that we can understand. I was just talking about how I wish I could talk about the classes with someone and how it hasn’t happened yet and today it did! Alma actually told me that she looked up something that I corrected one of our speakers about on the internet and that she thought my point of view was right and she was glad I’d brought up the question.

Finally at dinner last night 2 girls from the separate counseling school but who were at the beach with us on Saturday (and speak English as a second language) told me that they liked the testimony I gave. I told them that it was nice of them to say, but that I thought I’d butchered it and was disappointed with the how the whole thing turned out. But they said they really weren’t just trying to just nice, they appreciated how honestly I talked about my struggles with the faith and that they know the kids who I spoke too and were sure that it was something they’d respect. It was just the encouragement I needed.

4 separate things, the day after my crisis, pretty cool; especially since I’m moving again on Saturday to Rancagua in the north of Chile for 10 days on a mini outreach mission. I’m bringing my computer but I don’t know if they’ll be internet… the next blog update might be a couple weeks out, but they’ll be a lot of pictures.

UPDATE: After I wrote the above entry I proceeded to have the worst night heartburn I’ve experienced here so far. I made it through the night but went to the emergency room in the morning because there was no way I could handle another that again. They listened to my symptoms and I was prescribed a bunch of medicine but no tests were done on me, hopefully it’ll pass. I have a feeling the devil is after me over here any way he can, whether it’s my head or my body.

Check out these cool Chilean scenes:

These are from a worship song writing workshop we did:

These are from the hospital this morning: