A Second Sabbath

Hello all.

Today was a surprisingly busy sabbath! After another wonderful breakfast (which we have every morning...and today we had fresh-squeezed orange juice), we headed to church. After yesterday's adventures, I found myself rather exhausted and this made it rather hard to concentrate on the Spanish, but it was a good service nonetheless. Today, the church said goodbye to one of its members, Eric, who leaves tomorrow to go live in Naranjos and be the lay pastor of the Presbyterian church there. It was clearly an emotional affair, and I could undertsand! We have been blessed to interact with Eric on several occasions, as he drove us to our medical clinic sites almost everyday.

After church came lunch, and after lunch was the weekly sports afternoon at Annie Soper with folks from the church. Even I ventured onto the soccer field today, along with Andrés and Dawn. Dawn and Leslie and I also got involved in a very lengthy volleyball game which involved fierce competition and lots of clear examples of my undeniable ineptitude. It was a long and tiring afternoon, physically - but it was good to interact with folks from the church, as our departure on Friday both seems and is (and will continue to be) closer and closer. Returning to the States will be very nice - familiar language, familiar faces - but already I can tell that this place will be missed.

Tomorrow we return to work in Yantaló. All of us will be going there in the morning to do what we can with the computers. I am not sure if the work will take us all week; it depends on how things go. But it is exciting to begin our last week of work and hopefully leave Yantaló with a good computer lab.

Otherwise, no earth-shaking news. All of us feel quite well and are enjoying ourselves. We will keep praying for you; please do the same for us. And I will be back to write soon. Blessings as you begin the week!

Happy trails -
sch