Escuela

Mondays are my hardest days. I have both of my spanish language classes in the morning, and then history and art in the afternoon for three hours. After history class I wanted to cry. Our teacher speaks super fast and seems to blur all of her words together. That will definitly be the most challenging class here. My ear is going to have to acclamate rather quickly if I expect to do well in that class. Art on the other hand is super fun. Yesterday we drew a sketch of these ancient sculptures of a man and woman. I'll take a picture of them on wednesday and post them. It's rather funny! But art is so beautiful because your brain literally forgets about EVERYTHING else, and purely focuses on the task at hand. It was extremely therapudic which all of us needed! And I have to say, for not taking an art class since 8th grade at MCS, I think mine looked pretty good ;)

Sunday was quite an adventure. It was the 20th anniversary of the death of my senora's husband, and so we had 30 people over at the house to celebrate and have comida together. I have never been quite for so long in my whole life!!! Maybe God is trying to teach me something... haha. One side of the family invited me to sit with them, which was SO awesome! Naturally, I sat next to an 8 year old named Bernardo. He had this magnetic drawing pad, and so we switched off writing spanish words and english words. I would write a spanish word that I knew, and teach him the English. IT WAS SO FUN. I felt so comfortable with him which reaffirmed the fact that I NEED TO TEACH LITTLE PEOPLE! I absolutely adore them. Which brings me to my next exciting God story. Mary Docter was here as  a substitute program director because ours was at Wheaton for meetings (she took a job there, starting in the spring). Mary was my teacher first semester of freshman year and was the person who first introduced me to this Westmont in Mexico semester! She is also extremely involved in a bilingual/dual immersion school near Westmont called Adelante Charter School. So one afternoon I had the opportunity to talk to her about my desires to work at the school. She proceeded to tell me that I could sign up for Spanish 190 (the spanish internship class) and that they would set me up in a classroom with a teacher. I could go in during their morning spanish session from eight to twelve, and help the teacher with whatever she needed and in the mean time PRACTICE/DEVELOP MY SPANISH! Um YES PLEASE! Sign me up for that immediately! I felt so encouraged that God has a perfect plan for me and parts of it are coming to fruition before my eyes! Incase anyone was wondering, Gods plan is 100% of the time more satisfying than anything we could muster up on our own!!! Yay for his provision!

This morning I went for a run with Sarita, one of my close friends on the trip. We talked about how we were feeling with one week down, fifteen to go. Both of us agreed that this is way harder than we expected it to be, but that it is obvious God has a plan for bringing us here. It is already obvious that he is changing my heart to rely on him more!! After we were done running and stretching, we sat on a bench in this park and prayed. Offering up our worries, concerns and frustrations to our loving and caring God together made us feel so cleansed. I feel so blessed to be here with people who are seeking God's plan for them, even when it seems uncomfortable at first. I have to confess, I looked at a friend's Europe semester blog and was overcome with confusion and frustration as to why I wasn't there. It's so much more comfortable to live in a hotel with friends, but I know that God has me here to learn how to love people who are different than me, so different that they don't even speak my language. But I am LEARNING, slowly but surely it is being solidified in my brain.

Please continue to pray that I would rely on God to sustain me and to be my joy. Pray against Satan's desire for me to be intimidated and therefore remain quiet, fearful of making a mistake. Obviously I'm going to make mistakes!!! Anyone learning something new makes mistakes. Pray that God would be my JOY, even when I am feeling frustrated. Pray that I would have a positive attitude, even when situations are challenging. Pray for team unity, that we can encourage each other and come before the Lord together in prayer and in worship of who he is. And pray that I would be present here.

Thank you so much for loving me enough to read my brain explosion on a page. I feel so blessed by your prayers and support!

Bendiciones y Dios le bendiga!