Well, the mission group is coming in less than a week!  I’ve gotten to a nice lul point where I’ve done everything that can be done ahead of time.  It’s good to get a little break, but I know it won’t last long.  David on the other hand is running all over the place.  They are getting the youth class ready for the group to come and put walls and a floor in.  That means they worked all morning in the rain.  Everyone needs to pray that it won’t rain, or at least not during the day, while the group is here so we can accomplish our goals.

The dogs harvested my watermelon.  It would have been the perfect size next week too.  But, I have another one growing, and it’s been raining, so hopefully it will be a big one.

On Saturday we had a ladies seminar.  Carolina taught on the importance and general roles of the woman.  I followed up with Biblical examples of jobs that a woman should do.  We had three catagories: Jobs (sub-cat: in the home, in the church, secular), Work with what attitude, and Limitations to our Work.  Each lady had a verse (from Titus, Proverbs 31 and various others) that she read and then she put it in the correct catagory.  I thought it was fun.  Afterwards we played games, ate lunch, and honored our ladies who are active.  I think we had 39 women and 13 kids.

The youth from San Marcos have been visiting our youth class on the farm.  This past Sunday the youth did their 4th Sunday project of visiting a member and having lunch and playing, and the San Marcos group joined them.  There are 8 from San Marcos.  Juan, one of our youth, gave his first lesson and did a great job.  David has been teaching on finances, and Sunday the kids had to get into a group and decide what they would do if they received $100,000 inheritance. 

Well, I know it’s probably time for an update, but I can’t really think of much to say.  One of our new members from the gospel meeting was a young man, and he hadn’t attended services.  We continued visiting him weekly, and this Sunday he was at church services!  I’m very excited because we were about to just decide he wasn’t interested, but we should never give up!

I bought a neat storage unit today.  It has 6 shelves with 3 bins for each shelf, and I’m going to use it in hopes of organizing all of my kids class supplies, school supplies, medicine, and other goodies I have packed away.  In the apartment I had all of this in containers, but that made it difficult when I wanted something.  At the house now I have them in the drawers and shelves of the closet, but it is still too much to fit.  Hopefully these small bins will make everything accessable.  I’ve got to get organized before the group comes.

Ah, we also have a little mouse that is taunting me.  Well, I haven’t actually seen it, but I prefer to think that it is both a mouse (not rat) and little (not big).  I put out poison, and it didn’t work.  Now I put out poison with food, and some of it was gone, so hopefully it suffered a painless death in some easy to discover, reach and clean place!  Last Friday I deep cleaned the whole house with Carolina (she’s very worried about the dust and my allergies and whenever I sneeze too much she comes over to dust the cabinet tops!).  Then last week it rained, and tons of huge flying ants decided to make our home their home.  What a mess.  I sprayed and then there were dead ants everywhere.  On the up side my yard is looking green and my watermelon is still growing strong!  I think it will be perfect eating size for the mission team, well, if David doesn’t get to it first!

I taught a ladies class on Tuesday titles, “Whose side are you on?”  I think so many times in life we ask whose side someone is on, or who we are rooting for, and that’s fine for baseball games and elections, but when it comes to church matters we should never be taking human sides.  There are two examples in the Old and New Testament.  When Joshua was going to go against Jericho, he encountered the captian of God’s host, and he asked, “Are you for us or our enemies” and the captian answered “Neither” or “No”.  Why would he said, “I’m with you!”  After all, he came to tell Joshua how to overtake “they’re enemies”.  The second example is in 1 Cor 1 when the church was dividing saying they were following Paul, Cephas, or Christ.  Paul clearly shows that this attitudes of “sides” is an attitude of division (Is Christ divided?), and is sinful because it puts men on the level of Christ (Was Paul crucified for you?  Were you baptized into the name of Paul?).  We see from these two examples that when someone wants us to take sides, they have a sinful attitude and we should respond that we are neutral or explain that Christ is not divided.   Finally we saw that this attitude is a sign of divison (reasons previously given), of spiritual immaturity (1 Cor 3:1-4), or could be a sign of someone who wants to be first among the church (In 3 John 9-10 a man is criticized for dividing the church by not accepting brothers and refusing those who want to accept them (or in other words don’t take his side) because he wants to be first).  This attitude is dangerous because, though it can’t destroy the church through out the world, a congregation can suffer and even split because some members have a “You’re with me or against me” attitude.  This attitude is also dangerous because it doesn’t allow any middle ground and doesn’t leave room for reconciliation.  “Who’s side” implied that they’re can’t be compromise or meeting in the middle.  Finally, when we choose sides, we are claiming to support someone.  But, what man doesn’t sin?  Are we going to support someone in their sin?  And what if you say you’re against someone, and then they repent and begin to do good works?  Will you be against their good works?  We can clearly see that only God is constant enough for us to be able to say that we will always support Him and be on His side. Finally, what should we do?  Warn the person of their divisive attitude (some may not understand what they are causing) (Titus 3:10) and warn them again. 

I put a lot of new pictures up.  Giovanni gave me a CD of pictures they’ve taken, so some are of baptisms during and after the gospel meeting, some are of our trip to San Juan where I taught Carolina to ride the waves =), and some are just random.

You wouldn’t believe how fast my watermelon is growing.  It literally doubles in size every night.  It looks like the good kind too (not the round ones, but the big oval ones!).  Now I have another baby one growing.  Did you know that first there’s the flower, and then the watermelon grows inbetween the flower and the vine, so for a bit the watermelon has a flower on the end?  I didn’t until yesterday.  Almost as fun as how pineapple grows!

Yesterday David finished up his 3 part lesson on why we don’t use instruments in worship.  The first class he taught about Biblical authority, and gave examples of how God got very angry when people didn’t obey him to the T.  We had to take our visa/anniversary detour to Costa Rica during the second class, so Juan Pablo taught.  He taught on the history of instrumental use from the Old Testament to today.  In David’s last class he taught answers to why some people say that they can use instruments, and taught about what God does allow us to use, our voice.  It was a good class, especially with so many new members.

We’ve had 28 baptisms since April!  Wow!  That means a lot of work!  We are having Bible studies about basic topics with those who have recently become Christians.  One of the men who became a Christian during our gospel meeting lead a prayer in tonights service (prayer and singing service) and did a great job.  It is good to see that they are learning from the classes.

I have a random watermelon vine growing in the back yard.  Luckily I didn’t see it when it was little or I probably would have pulled it up!  I already have 2 tiny little watermelons.  I don’t know how fast they grow, but maybe we can have some when the group is here.  The odd thing is that I don’t think we’ve even eaten watermelon since we’ve been there, so who knows where the seed came from.  Hmm, must be a Heavenly Harvest.  I’ve been wanting to plant a garden, so I think God is urging me along!

David and I got to take a mini-vacation this weekend.  It was our 5th anniversary on Friday, and we had to renew our visas, so we took a trip to Costa Rica.  In one day we went to a theme park, museum, and shopping.  We had a great time and got to relax a bit.  They played Spiderman 1 and 2 on the bus which was a perfect set up to see 3 yesterday.