KT to VZ

Last night was the second night for the local church conference here. There was a pastors' meeting before it started that I didn't really need to go to, but transportation-wise it was better for us all to go over at once. I was just going to sit and read while they all met, but then the pastors' daughter of that church was going to go see a friend for a bit so she invited me to go with her. I figured I might as well, so I did. The catch was that neither she nor her friend spoke any English, and my Spanish is still pretty rusty! I'm able to speak phrases better than I can understand what they're saying, mainly because they speak fast, mush their words together, and they have an accent that drops the s's. But we were able to have some conversation, and it was neat to see what a tiny local house looked like.

The church time itself was still awesome, even though I couldn't really understand everything much. When the service started there was no power at the church, and it was evening so it was getting dark in the building. They lit some candles and had a large battery-powered LED light that helped. Singing was a capella at first, and then Ben got up to do a prayer. He said how we don't need to have electricity to worship God, and shortly after that the lights came back on! :)

During the service, they called me up front (fortunately I was able to catch them saying my name, but I didn't know what they said before and after it!) and the whole church sang to be the traditional Venezuelan birthday song. It's rather long and apparently quite beautiful, though again I don't know what they said. They all sang very passionately and that was just awesome, though I was feeling rather self-conscious and embarrassed! :)

Afterward as we were all in the truck going back to the house, they stopped somewhere, it looked kind of like a convenience store. Christina told me to come in because she wanted to show me something, and there I got to pick out a birthday cake! She even got a yellow candle for it. :) A bunch of us all sat outside, and they insisted on singing happy birthday to me - twice, once in Spanish and once in English! The funny part was some random passersby even joined in! The cake was really good, it had shaved chocolate on it and chocolate-dipped strawberries. I took a picture, but I'm waiting to upload all my pics til after I get home. There was even one piece left, which I brought back and will probably enjoy later today.

While we were sitting outside eating at that place, the lights just went off! We didn't stick around too long after that, and as we drove back to the house it seemed like a good portion of town was in the dark... including our place. Yay flashlights! I hadn't brought a flashlight, but fortunately Linda let me borrow hers. It's dim, but better than nothing. Doing things like taking my contacts out by flashlight is not exactly easy, but it's doable. Fortunately a laptop screen makes a really good lamp in a room too. It was fairly warm last night in the house, especially in my window-less room, but I got to sleep ok. Apparently the power came back on a little after midnight, so Don came in to turn the a/c unit on, but it was off again this morning so not sure if we lost power again later or what. But this morning I was almost cold, even without the a/c on! It's a beautiful morning here in Venezuela, lots of sunshine and moderate temps.

This morning is another session for the conference, and at some point this morning Ben and I are doing our talk to the single people there. I'm praying it goes well; the people here seem to be very receptive so that's good. I'm not sure what the rest of the day holds; it's always a surprise here! :)