Saturday night: We found an Applebee’s. It was expensive, and the menu was still in Spanish, but everything inside looked just like ours and it was such a nice taste of home!
Sunday- Went to lunch with families at the church… it’s amazing how giving and welcoming their culture is…Ben and I went to a ladies home and she prepared a feast for just the two of us…when we asked her what time we needed to leave, she said the whole afternoon was ours…people in America are way too busy for that…
Tues pm- Went to a restaurant to watch the futbal game…there were 50+ students there!… I had the opportunity to share how God had changed my life and why we are here with one of the soccer guys…it broke my heart to hear that he really trusted getting better friends/putting good people around you to change him and give him hope…he was very interested in “a relationship with God” and wants to come to church with us this Sunday…his name is Mario.
Scary…Ben and I tried to go on a date on Wednesday. We have been missing American ice cream and someone told us that there was a dairy queen not far from where we live… we climbed up into the hoopty (just the two of us in this massive burnt orange suburban) and drove for an hour to get somewhere that was 15 minutes away. We finally found dairy queen at 845- closed- even though the door said it closed at 9:00. So date night ended up at McDonald’sJ Its amazing how shaken you can feel when you are in a foreign country, can’t read the road signs (nor do they mean anything anyways), have difficulty navigating their “laterals” and massive roundabouts (ways to get off the main roads), they drive like maniacs, there are no lanes on the road, don’t have seatbelts, and you can’t communicate with anyone to ask for help. I am usually terrified and on the edge of my seat when we are driving. The Lord has been stripping me of where I place my security and forcing me to trust in His sovereign control. Here even the most basic things like feeling safe on the road, knowing where we are, where we are going, and being able to order the food we want can be very challenging. However, these challenges reveal how demanding my heart really is and have forced me to rest more fully in Christ. Although we feel as though we have more control over circumstances and situations than we probably actually do in the States, we really feel our loss of control and total dependency on the Lord and others here. This is so good for our self-sufficient hearts.
Campus- Campus time has been getting better and better. Some guys/girls are really meeting a lot of people through basketball, and soccer. Some of the girls and I are focusing on the aerobics classes. We’ve been able to meet several girls that now go to lunch with us nearly everyday. Please pray that these relationships will be built on a foundation of friendship, and that the love from these friendships will move us to share God’s love with these students.
Team social- We have eaten a lot of Mexican food since we’ve been here so our team was so excited on Friday when we went to “Sirloin Stockade” which is kinda like a Ryan’s. It was a massive buffet with free refills on drinks (a rarity here- we pay $2 for every coke/water we order), great American food, and dessert! They loved it and we all ate till we could eat no more. Then we went Salsa dancing- also a blast! This will probably one of our best socials.
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