Hey all! Jessy here 🙂
So today was our day of rest and it was such a blessing.
We started our day at the hour of 9am–practically the afternoon–with a breakfast of eggs, toast, and fruit. Has anyone mentioned the fruit so far? It is SO good. It’s sweet and juicy and ripe ALL the time. It’s almost like we’re in a tropical location 🙂 At breakfast we got our church assignments and half of us went to an open-air, patio church at 10:15am and the rest of us went to a smaller church at 2:45pm (more similar to a typical American church: TVs and chairs and a full band complete with AC). I personally went to the second church so I had most of the day to myself to rest.
Some of us did laundry in the sinks and hung our clothes out to dry on the clothes lines…I can attest that all the parents would be SO proud of us.
Then we went up to the gazebo. It’s at the very tip top of the base and the view of the valley is ~incredible~. Across the valley is the mountain range and it looks like a Hawaiian paradise. Looking out you can hardly tell there’s houses and farms and businesses underneath the blanket of trees.
We left for church promptly at 2:45 and made our way downtown. They were very welcoming and inviting once we got there but we took up like 1/3 of the whole church. It was packed! We worshiped with them and the cultural differences were evident. For instance, the whole church was dancing and clapping and were evidently so happy the whole time! While in the churches, that at least I’ve been to, in America there seems to be a more reserved vibe about it. It was really encouraging to be surrounded by believers who were worshipping the same God, and in love with the same Jesus, but were doing it with different cultural norms and in a different tongue.
We got back to the base around 5 and went back the gazebo until dinner. Dinner was “pico pollo” which basically just means chicken fingers with sides of pasta salad, fried, plantain, and banana pudding. ¡Muy Rico!
We had a team meeting at 7pm to talk about some Joshua stuff. Mostly just catching up on Spiritual Formation… Sam talked to us lots about prayer and the fears/uncertainties we have about it; we’re gonna be diving a lot deeper into that in the next couple of weeks. Can’t wait!
We’re having a great time and this next week is going to FLY by! We’ll be home before anyone blinks an eye!
Bye for now 🙂