Spanish Crash Course...

Well, more and more this place is feeling like "home", considering it's 2,500 miles from the real place! People ask me what I keep my time busy with and I look back at the days and wonder myself but the days keep filling up with something. Boredom isn't something that I've experienced yet and that's fine by me!

My Spanish is still very much in the rough stages though there really isn't a better way to learn than to be immersed in it. However, I was hanging out with the boys from the orphanage yesterday and I'm pretty sure they were trying to take advantage of the new white guy who doesn't speak a lot of Spanish and doesn't always know what is going on! I think they probably succeeded to some degree...

First, when I arrived at the orphanage, they started talking about me taking them to a different place to play soccer (in their broken English/Spanish). Well, after trying to confirm that this was ok with the parents (who only speak Spanish) we took off for a place about 15 minutes away. After playing about 20 minutes of soccer, though, one guy claimed that he had to use the washroom really bad. So, we got in the car and they guided us to a place where there was a washroom, which happened to be an arcade-type place owned by someone the boys knew. So, we ended up staying there for about half an hour playing some ps2. Then after insisting that we needed to get back home, they tried to convince me that they needed to stop by the store first to pick up some treats. Well, we managed to make it home without hitting the store but I couldn't help but wonder if I was just some easy pray for these scheming 10 year olds! Nonetheless, I've had a lot of fun connecting with these boys and unfortunately, the orphanage parents are leaving at the end of this month so their worlds are going to be turned upside down for the next while.

The "cold" hard reality

The past couple of days have been a lot quieter around here. Brenda is gone as well as Donna and I am alone in this house - it's just me and the dog holding down the fort. The first day alone at home (Tuesday) was definitely the hardest but things have been picking up since then. I suppose that the reality of being in a foreign country with a minimal grasp of the language and being away from all family and friends has been sinking in.

These past few days have been fairly full of activity though and God has granted me a number of good connections already. I've made some good connections with the North American Church which consists in winter of the snowbirds and in summer of the faithful retirees who live here year round and brave the heat. I'll be leading them in worship this Sunday filling in for the person who had to travel to Panama for family reasons. I've also been able to make some connections with the Spanish church as well, having gone to rehabilitation center in neighboring Guaymas on Tuesday evening with a small group that lead the men in worship and a Bible Study. I can't say I really knew what was going on but it was a good time.

I was also able to spend some time with the boys at the Orphanage, about 20 minutes away. The picture above is one of my new-found buddies at the orphanage. There are 8 children there ranging in age from 2 to 11. We had a good time working up a sweat playing some soccer.

Thank you for all your prayers! They have definitely been felt!

2500 Miles later....

Well, 2500 miles and 54 consecutive hours spent in my car and I have made it to the toasty coast of the Gulf of California. I actually did manage to catch more than a couple hours of sleep in my car and with my windows rolled down, the lack of air conditioning wasn't unbearable. The humidity hit though, about an hour from San Carlos. More inland in Mexico, it's a hot dry heat but here on the coast, the humidity combined with the heat is more than the average Manitoban is used to. The temperature usually gets up to about 32 right now and cools off to about 25. When I tell people that i'm staying here for the summer, about 95% of them think I'm crazy to be planning to brave the summer heat. I guess we'll wait and see - I'm just thankful for air conditioning!

This week has been quite busy. Brenda and her husband (the owners of this house) left on Friday, after helping me make connections with the local spanish and english church, orphanage, and other people in community. Another person who was here to visit Brenda is here until Tuesday when she's heading back to Canada. She's spend a fair bit of time here and has been my unofficial tour guide, showing me around San Carlos and neighbouring city Guaymas. I'm been meeting a lot of new people, North American and Mexican alike and floundering my way through a lot of Spanish conversionations, usually getting completely lost but managing to understand the odd phrase.

I am planning to post a photo album on this site soon to give you more of an idea of what this place and the house I'm living in looks like. Thank you for all the prayers that have been offered up - they have been hugely needed and definitely felt. The hardest part is going to be getting integrated with the community (especially the Spanish community) and of course getting a modest grasp of Spanish.