Well, this is going to be an exciting week to report about!!! Ok not really all that fun filled like the past 5 months have been. I have found a spot for me, and now I am in charge of maintenance around the base. We have several projects that need the special touch of well anyone. Currently I've been working on a room where I had to finish the tile on Monday and until who knows when I'll be patching the ceiling where concrete has fallen. I have several places that look like this that will need help. I started with having to paint on an adhesive primer type thing so the new cement would stick to the old stuff. Wednesday I started patching and it was a complete disaster. SO FRUSTRATING!!! I bought some patch stuff that they said would work and they told me how much it would cover so I mixed it and before i could even finish putting it up it was hard..... Then I didn't have enough to even make a little dent it the areas. Then I tried a different mix and that completely fell through Literally, it wouldn't even stick up on the ceiling. Then finally I found another substance that is a type of plaster more than cement and it's working great but it is almost all gone and we aren't sure what the real name of it is because is was left here about 4 years ago in a 5 gallon bucket. I'm LOOKING FORWARD to what the next mixture will bring. I have gone from the extreme horrible to the amazing and I'm not sure what the next one will be. We also have a youth team from Canada here this week. They are actually a high school basketball team here and they are working in 2 schools a day running mini camps and playing teams here in the evenings. They are great fun and keeping me company in the evenings and even sometime throughout my work days checking to make sure I'm actually working. It is busy here now that I basically have a job. There is always something that needs to be done after i get done with this room I have 4 windows in our great house to replace, a building project that I get to help do the re-bar for and pour the cement ceiling on, tons of stuff!! Well that is pretty much all I have. Hope all is well where ya'll guys are and you're staying warm. I'll send some sun when i can!! OH YEA, I have signed up for a spanish class!!!! I am super excited to study spanish and hopefully God will allow me to go back to spanish speaking places to practice what I learn!! YEA BUDDY!!

Well, this week was a good week but very hard. We had the conclusion of the Discipleship Training School. It means that the students left and returned to their homes. It is rather lonely here without them, of course there is other staff here but when I have spent 5 months hanging out with this group of friends and now I have to adjust to not having them around it's not that easy. We were able to have a nice graduation dinner on Thursday night and then graduation on Friday evening. It was a nice time we allowed some of the students to talk about their experience and how God has changed them and then we handed out their certificates and had desserts and hung out til the late hours of the night. It didn't take long for some of them to leave, the first one left at 5:30 Saturday morning and then by 9 am two more left. By the time dinner on Saturday came there were only 2 left. It was SOO hard to say goodbye to them all, man it was horrible. Sunday though was an incredible day with the remaining students. One of them had her parents here so they taxied us to the beach and we went on a hike to some tide pools and hung out at the beach!! It was great, such a fun, relaxing, and awesome day to remember!! Now there is only one student left, my little Swiss friend Jonas, who PRAISE GOD is here until the 28th!!! It makes it easy to have the students leave with time in between and not all at once, I mean Saturday was a horrible day having to say goodbye to so many. Like I said it is very quiet here, I've had this week off to catch up on what I wasn't able to do while being gone for 6 weeks but in my free time aside from catching up I think about going and seeing what the students are up to then I realize THEY AREN'T HERE!!! I'm not quite sure what I'm suppose to do now, i have this whole week off then I start back at work but with no students I'm not sure where they will put me. I know we have teams coming off and on and then a 6 week training course in may/june but other than doing that I don't know what the next 6 months will hold for me. I am kinda excited just to see what area God is going to put me in, but I think it will be a very trying period since my heart is for discipling and right now I have no opportunities to disciple. Ecclesiastes 3 has become my favorite chapter to read lately my two favorite verses are
3:1 "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven." and 3:12 "So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can." Just a little encouragement for me in this new season I'm coming into, to see that I must look for the good even if I don't feel like I'm being used in the way I feel I should be. It's all about being a servant to those around me. Having the attitude of Christ in all situations. Doing what I need to do for those around me and not complaining, having fun because I'm still doing the work God wants me to do I'm just not overseas like I want to be!!

Well, I'm back..... Sorry I couldn't keep this thing updated while I was away but I'm sure ya'll can imagine I was a little busy and internet wasn't available all the time. I can't even begin to think where to even begin but I'll try. I'm not quite sure what my favorite part of outreach was. I had 2 MAJOR favorite places. One in each country!!! I ABSOLUTELY LOVED CHINANDEGA, in Nicaragua. The family we stayed with and the ministry we did was increible (incredible!!) I have found a new passion for spanish and so i apologize if I throw words in here because I'm trying to keep practicing!!! Chinandega was one of the greatest locations because we got to do so much fun stuff. Like de-licing peoples hair, we basically just washed their hair and combed it for them.. I tell you what I was more afraid of combing then the lice, I thought I was going to rip some of those womens hair out by the way it was tangled and I was pulling on it! The open airs or campaigns that they call them were awesome. We would work with another ministry and alternate dramas and testimonies and have an awesome time of worship right in the park and under the stars SO GREAT!!! We were only there for 6 days so it wasn't long enough for me but I guess it was long enough for God. I did however get the great opportunity to have (puntadas) stitches so that was pretty fun. The best part came in Costa Rica a week later when we got to take them out!!! Who would have ever thought that a pair of fingernail clippers, tweezers, and 2 LED flashlights is all you need to remove 3 stitches!!! Veronica one of the other leaders, bless her heart tried to remove them for me. After she pulled on one that wasn't cut yet I think my scream helped her understand it was better to cut all the way through the dental floss like stitch before pulling!! She tried her hardest to get them but was so afraid of hurting me so I had to snip them with the fingernail clippers and she pulled them out. Looks like a real doctors office from the pics huh!!! Costa Rica was also a fun time, we did a lot of physical work, construction and it was pretty fun. Well except digging in the old landfill. That was ridiculous I swear no joke there was more garbage in the ground then there was dirt. Shirts, pants, shoes, bottles, everything you can think of it was stinking amazing. We thought the deeper we dug the better it would get but we sure were wrong.

This is the pile when we were done digging the footing for a wall!!! Crazy!!! We worked at a church helping on a feeding center they were building and heard some of the most amazing testimonies of people working in ministry in this village. Pretty awesome!! After that week we had our Silent Retreat where we all were completely silent for 24 hours. It was a time where we couldn't listen to music, talk, or make even a sound out of our mouth. We were suppose to spend the time praying, reading our bible and listening to what God wanted to say to us. It was incredible. I loved it, I spent the day reading my bible and actually read passages that I've never read before so it was really cool. I was able to study new things and just get a fun day of discovering God in the word in new ways! Our last week in Costa Rica was spent working with one more family who had a ministry in their community near Heredia where we were staying. This was my other favorite location, the family was awesome and the opportunity we had to work with them and help them meet new people in their neighborhood was great. We did more digging and mixing of concrete, i was able to help dig a septic tank hole..... It was about 8 feet deep when I started and by the time I finished I got to close to 13!!! It was pretty cool to be in a hole that deep with a 2 foot shovel and a bucket on a rope that I was putting the dirt in and having someone pull it up and empty it. Then the last day I had the great and amazing privilege to actually MAKE a ladder and use it to go about 20 feet up to the top of the power pole and reconnect a line that came off. It was very interesting that's for sure. It was fun though to know that the ladder I was standing on was straight up and down and tied to the pole with coat hangers to make sure it didn't move!!! As i was climbing up one of the pieces of wooden rungs that was nailed came out. (It wasn't one that I hammered in) just so you know!!! AHHHH the amazingly simple life of other countries!!! So different than the united states!! Outreach was a blast and I tried my hardest to learn as much spanish as I could. God bless mi familia en Chinandega who taught me the most. Ahh my favorite phrase was Montse, Como se dice. Montse is one of the girls in the family that spoke AMAZING engish and I just kept asking "HOW DO YOU SAY....." but I would ask how to say it in spanish and repeat it and tried my hardest to speak as much as possible. I'm thinking spanish classes are in my near future!!! Thank you all for your prayers and support in this amazing time of my life. It was incredible and I love the fact that I can travel and show the love of God to all I meet!!!