Recapping the weekend

This past weekend was a blast. On Friday the school had a half day so we decided to have the kids over for lunch (tacos!) and then out to bowling. I scored a 117!! (so what if we happened to have lane bumpers, I wasn’t the one who asked for them).

Sunday was the first time I had the privilege of meeting the pastor of the English speaking church (he was back in England for the summer). What a variety this church is! For those of you who know the Mennonite game (where you try to figure out how you are related someone or at least know of them) we play a similar game. We try to guess where each other are from based on the accents. Church was great. Pastor Andy started a series over stewardship that will go throughout the semester. This week was over Psalms 8, the Lord created the Earth extraordinarily beautiful. He then created us with glory and honor even though we messed it up with sin. He gives us value (God cares for humanity v.4), purpose (made us rulers over the Earth), and gave us a personal relationship with the King (Christ's redeeming grace).

Sunday night was another amazing experience. I had the opportunity to go to a "classico" or a rival game. The two teams were professional soccer teams from Santa Cruz. Let's just say the crowd was ready for this game. We arrived about 20 minutes early and they end sections behind the goals were filled with fans jumping and chanting. After the green team (Oriente) scored the first goal of the game, the crowd started shooting fireworks. Security isn't very tight here in Santa Cruz. If you have high speed internet, I've posted a video of the crowd so you can get a better feel for the craziness! In the end, Oriente beat Blooming 2-0. As the Blooming players were coming off the field, their fans tried to shoot fireworks at them! Talk about loyalty (sarcasm). We decided we should try to get out of there because there has been several times to where the fans meet outside of the coliseum and things get rowdy. Sure enough we turned the t.v. on the next day and there were clips of police shooting tear gas into the crowd to disperse them.

On Monday we had Bible study with the high school. We had 45-50 students show up. We are starting a series over Max Lucado's book "It's Not About Me." This week's lesson was over being self-centered and how Christians should be Christ-centered instead. What does it look like to be Christ-centered in your lives?

As you can see it has been a busy weekend. Thank goodness we don't have anything going on today. Since the vote to keep the president did not go the way some districts wanted, five of the nine districts decided to make a statement and are striking today. So nobody is allowed to drive anywhere today. You should of seen the stores last night. On our way back from Bible study, we decided to stop in and get a few items. As we pulled in, it looked like Hurricane Faye was heading for Bolivia. Everyone was stocking up! (It's just one day) We decided that our lists weren't worth the wait.

Pray for:
-Tomorrow's prayer meeting (I start leading the youth)
-The government in Bolivia
-All the students in the US as they make final preparations and begin to head back to college (wow, that feels weird to say)

God Bless,

Jon