Sun and Spa

I cannot believe that it is already Saturday. This morning my sister, Grant and his sister, our friend Juan Diego and I all went to Banos de Cuenca where we had a little encounter with the Spa! It was a great ending to a really long week. I am amazed at how fast the time is flying, especially this week. We have been so busy this week with planning and trying to find time to get everything done, but amazingly in the end it all seems to come together. On Monday Grant and I spent 7 hours planning for a meeting that we were going to have with the leader of the discipleship ministry. It was really interesting because we were brainstorming, searching the internet, and working through problems together. I felt like we were learning together and able to teach each other things that we each knew from our other classes. I loved the feeling of gaining new information through the resources that we had and making progress, but it was a challenge for sure. On Tuesday it was a similar story, but this time we were planning for Sunday School. This was alot more fun, and more familiar to me. After working the last two summers with younger kids, i enjoyed searching for ideas and trying to come up with the best plans for Sunday School. When it came to doctrine and themes, I was feeling a little inadequate to write those out and choose the best options for a whole year. We did our best, and we sent our ideas to the leader of the ministry. I guess we will see what he thinks after he reads them!

Wednesday and Thursday flew by for me. After planning and classes, I have been going home at night beat, and not really up for too much, but on Wednesday night I got to spend some quality tome with my family. I really enjoy spending time with them and learning more about them. Thursday we were in meetings and classes all day. We presented a proposal for the discipleship ministry in the morning, had a devotional with the Bio students, had Spanish class after lunch, and in the evening we taught the missions team a class about strategies for ministry. It was somewhat of an overwhelming day but in the end I felt really blessed that God was working through us and that we were able to get it all done!

On Friday I was able to spend some time with Ellie and Grant when we werent doing any homework! It was wonderful. At around 5 we walked to the Supermarket to get ingredients to make all kinds of fun breads, mostly because we went to the fruit market for our culture class and got a bunch of different fruits. We then walked back to Ellie's house and spent the rest of the night baking, talking to her family, and watching part of Australia. It was really nice to spend time with friends and not be doing work! Today was really great too, I am thankful for this time of rest, and ready to begin my day tomorrow at the Church!

As I enter into this week, please pray for...
1. rest, that we will find time to rest in the midst of our crazy schedule
2. wisdom, as we are praying for and working with the ministries at the church, please pray that we will be wise in our decisions and our planning
3. encouragement, as we are hitting the half way mark, please pray that we will be encouraging to each other and find encouragement from God in the midst of our experience.
and 4. please pray that we will be seeking God daily, and give ourselves to sharing His love to others