Prayer Request-

One of the babies in my room went into the children's hospital on saterday with a severe case of Dengue Fever. For those of you who don't know, dengue is one of the worst diseases here and leaves healthy adults bedridden for days to weeks. It gives you high fevers, vomiting, diarrhea and other painful symptoms. This little one, Carlitos, is 2 and has been sick most of his life with bad nutrition and so is a little more fragile than most. So your prayer for a quick recovery would be great. Dengue is not something anyone wants to get.

House visits! Yesterday was a wonderful day. A high school group from Saskatoon came to El Jordan for a day of home visits to families of El Jordan and working on the new boys' property. So, I tagged along as a translator and got the chance to visit two families' homes. I really enjoyed getting to know them better. In the morning, my group visited a lady named Sebastiana and her three children. I have gotten to know her youngest (3) Valeria in the baby room before she changed over to the little kids room and so I spent a lot of time hanging out with her. She is such a sweety. We were all struck with how well behaved her kids were and how much they loved and respected both their mom and their dad. We had so much fun hanging out with them, talking and playing with the kids that time flew far too fast. I feel like I left with a friendship starting to bloom. You can pray for Sebastiana and her husband though as they have not yet made the decision to accept Christ as their personal savior, but she has really been enjoying her Bible studies at El Jordan.
The next house we visited was Nelly's. Nelly has been coming to El Jordan for a few years now, and we have become friends through her youngest son, William, who is in my baby class. It was great to get to know her husband and other kids as well as share together as brothers and sisters as both her and her husband are seeking God with their life and learning.
I so enjoyed yesterday, and am very grateful that the Lord has brought these two families into my life. I know I will be praying for them, as I know they will be praying for us as well.

I then was invited to spend some time in the plaza getting ice cream with the team and seeing a little of the Good Friday celebrations. It was really fun getting to know the youth from SCS.
We walked through the catholic church and it broke my heart. Thousands of people lined up to place ceremonily acceptable things on the feet of Jesus and Mary idols. I wondered how many of them knew that we don't need idols to lay our burdens at the feet of Jesus. And we don't need to pay money to come before his throne, or line up to be in his presence. I wondered if they knew that our savior didn't want us to place branches at his feet once a year, but rather bow before him in prayer every day we draw breath. I wondered if they had tasted the freedom and hope, love and acceptance that is only found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and not in our own deeds. How amazing is the grace that is given us.

Today was a sunshiney day. Literally (of course) and it was just overall a fun, normal day at El Jordan. The schools are on strike in Santa Cruz, so on a day that we usually have 3 kids in the mornings, we had 15. So, with one baby in a stroller, one being carried, and a string of 13 kids, we crossed two busy avenues and headed to the park. I was so proud of the kids when they reached out and be-friended another little boy who was alone at the park. So I invited him to eat snack with us. He was all smiles. I reached into the bag though, to find something that made me chuckle a little. We had asked two of the older boys to get snack together before we left. We told them to get one pack of crackers per kid and one banana. I found about 25 packs of crackers and 6 bananas.

What a wonderful weekend! I was invited to a weekend away, to a place in the mountains called "Semai Pata". The scenery was gorgeous, the city pace was slow and the company was amazing. The first day, we headed on up to a collection of waterfalls. Besides them just being beautiful, the outing was made more memorable when I got to cross two things off of my bucket list. 1. Stand behind a waterfall. 2. Do something that terrifies me and not be terrified, ( I stood on top of the waterfall overlooking the 30 foot drop. Heights aren't my thing- my porch scares me.). Overcoming fear is always an exciting thing to me. We took pictures, and played in the water, then took more pictures. As we were heading back we crossed a stone path across the river. My foot slipped- which sent me tumbling into the water and my flip flop floating downstream towards the waterfall. As I was scrambling to save myself and my flipflop, the rest of the gang, not hearing the kafufal, kept walking leisurely down the path, unaware of my almost death. In the end, I saved my flip flop got to shore and caught up with the others before they noticed.
The next day, we spent some time at the Incan ruins. It was so cool thinking about they way these people lived. It makes me wonder. In a few hundred years, will people pay to come see ruins of our houses? What will they assume about us? While we were hiking, we met a dog. It was so excited to see us, it erupted in howls. He followed us the whole way, stopping with us when we took pictures and leading the way to the next lookout. We named him Rahshum and he was pretty cute. As we pulled away in the taxi, though, we looked out the window and saw poor rahshum, puppy dog eyes out, watching us leave. Then something crazy happened, he started chasing our taxi down the dirt, mountain road. He chased us, keeping up, for a good 10 minutes before he saw some other tourists and stopped to hang out with them. Thats one loyal dog.

Overall, I had an amazing weekend, getting to know new people, making new friends and getting to know already existing friends better. What a blessing.

God bless, all.