Sunday y Monday...

Sunday started out with church here on the property in the palapa... Greg Huffer, one of the pastors on staff, spoke to us from I Thessalonians 1 and I led worship... I was in a little bit of a hurry, though... I was eager to get in the car with Cesar to go pick up Jen!! Her flight arrived on time and we had some lunch at Carl's Junior in the airport... What a great day!!

We brought Jen back to LDM (Lugar de Misericordia, where we stay)... She unloaded and I told her about our Anniversary surprise! With Todd's help I booked a cute little place for us to stay in a town just up the road called Santiago... It's this really cool, quaint little village... We stayed right in the town square (we actually didn't leave the town square the whole time)... The square was more like a triangle with the large Catholic church stretching above every other building there... It was beautiful!

We unpacked our stuff at the place we were staying and Jen pulled out these huge chocolate chip cookies that her mom had made!! I'm about as happy as I can possibly be when I sink my teeth into a chocolate chip cookie (especially onces made with Ghiradelli chips), so this completely made my day!! Thank you, Mama Lo... Thank you!!

Once we got settled we took a wonderful nap and then got ready for dinner... We went to this incredible Italian restaurant across the square called L'Anfora di Iannilli... It was perfect! We had a nice, long, lingering dinner... Jen got spaghetti and I got lasagna... We were there for around 3 hours just catching up and talking, it was great!


Here is a picture of the restaurant when we were done
(seriously, 3 hours later)...


We walked back through the square and I snapped off some pictures...

Here is the view from the place we were staying... It was so beautiful... a fountain in the courtyard, everything lit up, beautiful scenery... Perfect!

Monday we woke up and lounged around... We got cleaned up and we both did some relaxing reading... We decided we would organize our stuff, check out, grab something to eat and be ready to get picked up by Cesar who was coming at 2:00...
We ate some food at Las Palomas, the Mexican restaurant next door... Jen is showing off her beverage of choice: CocaLight! CocaLight is definitely different than Diet Coke... It has more flavor, I can't really explain it but it's really good...

We came back to the property around 2:30 and helped get ready for the Rayitos de Luz (Little Rays of Light) pool party... We invited all the kids from Rayitos de Luz over to swim and have dinner... This was great because Jen and I got to hang out with our little buddy Jose!!

Jose totally stole Jen's heart a few weeks ago, and she brought him a bunch of little gifts when she came back down... Jose is radiant... He exudes joy with an infectous smile... I wonder if he realizes that his circumstances are so dire... I wonder if he knows just how poor he is... And I wonder, if he did know, would it matter nearly as much to him as it would to me? These kids are teaching us about life... about how to have joy in spite of our circumstances... about not comparing our situation to everyone else's... about finding beauty and happiness with little more than each other...

Jose liked his new clothes, but he liked being with us more... He enjoyed being with us more than any gift we could have brought... In fact, to him we were the gift... I think that's how it's supposed to be!






I have to run down and lead worship, so I'll write more later... (un poco mas tarde)