KT to VZ

This morning Ben made a very true comment to me - "I bet last year on your birthday, you never thought you'd be spending your next one in Venezuela!" So far it's been a good day. I got to take a shower in more than a trickle of water, though it was still cold. We went to Esperanza Viva this morning and had a great time just hanging out, singing, etc. I got to provide the teaching this morning. I was a little nervous about it simply because I wasn't sure how well my Greek and Hebrew thoughts in English would translate to Spanish, but everyone enjoyed it and Christina did a wonderful job of translating for me. I even taught them two words in Hebrew - tov which means good, and hesed which means love, mercy, goodness, or kindness. They learned tov very easily, but they had a hard time pronouncing hesed because a it's a very guttural sound. They all had fun trying though! :)

The Esperanza Viva church is the one we were at Thursday night, and it's open air - basically a roof on posts on a concrete slab. To get to it, you have to walk up a mostly dirt path, which was mostly mud after all the rain we had last night. While I was teaching this morning, it started pouring! Some people had to move inside a bit more to stay dry. Fortunately it cleared up before we were ready to leave a bit later on. And now this afternoon, the sun came out! The rain cooled it off today too, so it's really quite comfortable.

We had a whole bunch of rain last night, and maybe midnight-ish a transformer blew outside. We lost power but then it came back, so I had to climb on my bed frame to restart the a/c unit. This morning the power was very weak, like brown outs. The lights kept randomly dimming or going brighter, and my bedroom has basically no light. It's interior so I don't have any windows, and the one light fixture won't get bright enough to see by. Thank goodness Linda loaned me a flashlight! We didn't have internet this morning either, so I wasn't able to get online til this afternoon.

After lunch today, we've been having a relaxing afternoon. I've spent it in a hammock in the upstairs common area, mostly reading. Hammocks are amazingly comfortable, and I'm considering bringing one home with me, except I have no idea where we'd hang it. We really don't have trees outside that are the right distance apart. Hmm...

Tonight the church conference continues, and I think Don is teaching tonight. I'll be teaching agin tomorrow with Ben, we're giving a talk for the single, non-married people. (Neither of us are single, so it'll definitely be interesting.)

Think I'll go back to reading now, and continue lounging in this hammock for a while. :)