On Thursday David went to services in Santa Teresita, a neighborhood here in Matagalpa. One of the members where we are working is helping them teach class and soon we will start helping them evangelize too.

On Saturday we held home services in a members home who recently lost a loved one. She had invited her family, so we had a lot of visitors.

That morning David and a group from the church had gone to Managua for the monthly preachers meeting, and on the way home they bought me a birthday cake. So after services we had a group come over to eat cake and play games with us. I put some pictures in the gallery, so don’t forget to look at those.

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David and I took a super fun weekend getaway this weekend for Valentines/my birthday! On Friday we drove down to San Marcos. David’s parents took us out to eat pizza as a birthday treat. We left Tigger with them so they could take care of him for the weekend. After lunch we finished the drive to San Juan del Sur. We found a hotel and got to walk on the beach and watch the sun set. It was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Saturday we were up early to enjoy the water. It was pretty hot, but the water was coooold. That didn’t stop us from boogying. The jelly fish didn’t stop us either. There were quite a few tiny little jellyfish (about the size of a golf ball). One got me on the leg, but not very bad. I told David something got me, but he didn’t really believe me. I think my credibility has been questioned after my shark comment. But after a bit one got David pretty bad on the arm. We survived though, and it was a lot of fun. Saturday night we drove back to San Marcos to stay with Giovanni and Carolina, and got to attend services with old gang. It was great to see everyone, and they are working hard and still growing (I think they’ve had two baptisms already this year). Giovanni is doing a very hard class on evangelism and making everyone learn lots of verses by memory. Everyone seemed really excited about it. They also have 12 members attending the Saturday classes at the Bible Institute in Jinotepe. Last month they had a medical mission group come and they attended over 1800 people. It sounded like they had a lot of fun with the group and were really organized.

While we were in San Marcos the congregation here in Matagalpa had a baptism. A member from Managua recentely moved here and placed membership with us, and his wife decided to become a Christian on Sunday. Too bad we missed it, means I don’t have any pictures for you.

Friday we had a super fun game night after services. David and I took all of our games up to church and we had a blast teaching everyone how to play Uno, Memory, and Battleship. They tried to learn Risk, but David was a little under the weather from an allergy attack and didn’t have the energy to explain all the rules. Everyone really liked it and I think we are going to have game nights at least once a month.

Sunday the men got together for their second men’s meeting. They are getting more organized. The formed different ministries and elected someone to be in charge of each (worship - in charge of communion elements, roll for preaching, etc; maintenance; benevolence, etc.). Now they just have to work on a budget for each area.

A family from church came over to visit us last night. Ephraim is one of the leaders of the congregation. In November he started making monthly bulletins for the congregation, and David is going to help him organize them on the computer and get the men to write articles and that sort of thing. It’s really neat because the members can see what is planned for the month and what we did the past month. Hopefully that will get more members involved in different activities. Ephraim also gave us a Spanish lesson, teaching us all about accents and pronouns. Now we just have to practice! They joined us for dinner too. It was a lot of fun.

Today we had ladies class in the morning and afterwards we went to a nutrition center here in Matagalpa. They search out kids who are extremely malnourised in the more rural areas and bring them to the center where they stay until they are healthy. Some stay up to six months. They had a bulletin board showing before and after pictures and it was amazing how skinny they came in and how healthy they looked when it was time to go home. After they send a kid home they check in with their parents regularly to make sure the kid is still doing ok and getting the food they need. The lady in charge said they had 20 kids there right now, and they have 10 workers there all the time taking care of them. It must be quite a task to keep everything organized. I was personally amazed at how clean and neat everything was - with 20 kids! While we were visiting, there was a mission group from Canada who was working in the center - holding kids and playing with them.

We have kept super busy this week! Last Friday we went up to Jinotega for their monthly preachers’ meeting. They made plans for gospel meetings and such for the next few months. I used the mission’s internet. I have decided it would be more time-efficient to drive 30 min to Jinotega and 30 min back just to use their internet than try to do it here at the internet cafe. Did you see I got lots of pictures online?

Saturday David taught a great lesson at the home service. We had services at Julio’s house because his daughter, Carolina, graduated from the univerity with something in pharmacy. He talked about relationships. He first noted that no relationship is perfect - maybe just in the movies. We have differences in relationships because of different likes and dislikes, different upbringing or culture, because we are imperfect people with flaws such as envy, pride, argumentative. Not even Jesus had a perfect relationship here on earth - not with his family (Mark 3:21), not with his disciples (Matt 8:26-7; 17:17-20) and not even with his best friend (Matt. 26:69-75). Next David talked about the fact that there isn’t solutions to all problems - this is why we have Christianity. Because we need to forgive when people ask for forgiveness (Matt 18:21-22) and when people don’t ask for forgiveness (Col 3:12-13, Luke 23:34). Jesus gave us this example of forgiveness. He wasn’t looking at the here and now, He was looking at the big picture (1 Tim 2:4), and because of this He could forgive. He didn’t worry about the little things, things that we won’t even care about in heaven. If we remember our goal - that all are saved, we can forgive. If we want happiness and peace in our relationships we should act like Christ: forgiving, kindness, humility, patience, tolerance and love.

Sunday David finished up his 4 part sermon on serving, and Monday I got to teach ladies class on “Acting, not Reacting” - encouraging the ladies to be good like God is good, regardless of how others act, based in Matt. 5. God sacrificed for us, not because we were good and deserved it, but because He is good (Rom 5:8). If we’re unfaithful, He is faithful. That way we’re not letting others control our behavior (reacting), but we’re acting based on our beliefs. We had services at a member’s home because it was her birthday. She was the cutest old lady. We played some games and had a pinata and they had her hit the pinata. It was too cute, because she was so tiny. I made a cake, and it was kind of nice to be able to do so. In San Marcos the congregation had gotten so big it was almost impossible to do those little things that make special days special (I would have had to make 4 cakes!).

Thursday we had services in Quebrada Honda and a really good sized group went. It’s about 10 km away, and we are trying to encourage those members who have to travel so far to get to the congregation. The plan is to have services there one Thursday a month.