10,000 MEMBER CHURCHES, BATMAN, DROOLING CLOUDS & FUTBOL!

"I love the Lord, He heard my voice, He heard my cry for mercy, because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live." Psalm 116:1-2

"Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible...I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." 1 Corinthians 9:19,22

Sorry that we didn't get to blog yesterday, but we were too tired! On Sunday, we attended a mega-church in San Christobol. The church sanctuary seats 10,000 members and this particular church has 2 locations! It was great, and as you can see from above we got to wear trendy headphones for an English translation of the sermon...the problem with that is that the woman who did the translation often stopped translating and started again several sentences later, so we missed a bunch. I actually understood more of the beginning of the service when I was only listening to Spanish. It's amazing how quickly you begin to pick up spanish when you have to!

Well, for the last few days we have not had running water in the house. The picture above is Jaci washing her hair with bottled water in Lauren's backyard. Sunday night, Lauren and I and a guy named Ricardo (who is also down on a short-term trip to Guatemala) went into the city to see the new Batman movie. It was PACKED! It only costs 3.50 to see a movie down here at night my friends! We actually pulled an ugly American moment. The lines were so long there was no promise that we would get seats, so Ricardo took our money and went up to the front of the line and offered to pay for the couple's tickets if they could buy ours as well. They said yes!

It rained quite a bit yesterday. Noah referred to the clouds as "drooling" because of the pouring rain and we thought that was funny!

Today we went to "Vida y Esperenza" (The School of Life and Hope) which has about 230+ students and is located in Santa Lucia. On the way, we got a good look at the volcano "fuego" which is active and a few days has been smoking. You can also see red at the top where lava has come out!

Anyway, this school has both boys and girls and Noah had a great time here playing soccer with the kids as you can see from the above picture. He really felt in his element. I think he made some good friends. We sang "You Are Good" with some of the kids, and taught it to them in Spanish and English. It's such a precious message to share with the kids because together we represent the words to the song, we are different nations and tribes and we are different generations praising the Lords together (a view that heaven will be like no doubt!) Tomorrow we hope to tackle a new song "Mighty To Save." Also, Noah is going to spend 30 dollars of his own money buying some athletic equipment for the kids at this school. All of these kids at the schools that we have been visiting are sponsored by Christians in America who sign up to donate a certain amount per month. That's Lauren's job at Mission Impact and she really tries hard to get all of the kids sponsorship as many of their families are in absolute poverty. This village is definitely more Americanized. Lauren said they are still poor and many have dirt floors in their houses, but some of them have televisions!

Also, we failed to get a pic of this because the camera was dying, but they have a mural of Optimus Prime (from the Transformers) holding up a Bible! Noah and I were quite excited about that!

It's been so great to see God working in the lives of these kids as they learn more about Him. This afternoon we went to the market in Antiqua and did a little bargaining. I bought some sort of wristband thing, but after looking at it realized that the design on it was a topless mermaid! So, we returned if for a more appropriate elephant face! It was very funny!

This evening we will be having dinner at the home of Gerber, a Guatemalan who serves as a missionary with Mission Impact and his family. Tomorrow we will spend our last day in Guatemala back at Vida y Esperenza. Please pray for Jackson and Reagan, as Jackson is starting to miss mommy. Reagan is doing great so far. God bless my friends!