Two weeks later....

Dear Andrew and Friends,
I apologize first of all for the lateness of this one. I told myself last week that Saturday's would be my day for writing my new blog, but the past couple days have been very eventful as well as tiring and I kept putting it off! But that just means I have to write more at one time now! :) I am gonna try a lot harder to make sure I am doing it weekly, because I hear some of you actually really enjoy reading these! :)
Over the past two weeks, I have been continuing to learn about God's faithfulness as well as his sense of humor! :) As well as filled with many types of emotions.
As I told you in my last blog, I attended my first youth service two Saturday's ago and again the week after that. It was a change from what I am used to in Canada, one because of the obvious language barrier, but instead of an event or activities and bible study, it is strictly just worship and a sermon. It is hard to be fully involved since I actually don't know what they are saying a lot of the time, but Seth tries to help me out with the words to the songs when he can, so I least have some idea of what I am singing. During the sermon time though, which I have really grown to enjoy, God has shown me a lot through just reading in the word. Every time I have sat down in a service, I have come out of the service with a new understanding of something God has shown me and it is really awesome. I have also been doing a study on end times, which is what a lot of the pastors seem to preach about down here. I have never really studied end times before, so it has been very interesting and I am learning lots about the different opinions and interpretations people have on the subject. The other youth here are really awesome too! :) I can already tell that I am gonna have a really hard time leaving a few of them because we instantly connected. It is hard to understand them but they are really helpful in trying to explain and they are very patient! :) This week coming up, Seth and I have been asked to sing a worship song in English together, so that should be interesting. Not sure which one yet, but please just pray that it goes well, cause I haven't done something like this in a long time and I am nervous!! Last weekend, I went with the youth group to a missions conference, and that was an interesting time to say the least. Very...unexpected, in a way that everything I thought was suppose to happen, didn't really turn out that way haha. I was told that we would be travelling to Monterrey (2 hour drive by bus) with the youth and there would be an English speaker. Well, they were accurate on the bus trip, but they didn’t mention the number of people that were going to be going on the one bus they had. I think the final total was about 70-75 on a bus which is only suppose to fit 65 small children, 3 to a seat, and this group was full of adults, children and youth. ☺ Needless to say their were about 20 people standing on the bus, and lucky me got to be one of those people all the way there! Haha. Then when we arrived at the conference, we found out that the speaker was actually not English, because he actually spoke two nights before. The service was still awesome though, with some of the most energetic adults I have seen in a very long time. So much for adults not jumpin around in church. Didn’t even matter how old, I honestly think there were more adults jumping around than there were youth! Haha. The ride home was interesting too! At least this time I got half a seat, but I ended up getting elbowed in the head like 15 times, and the person didn’t realize what was happening so I kinda had to put up with it. Unfortunately that whole night led into a two day migraine, and the medication down here is really expensive, but I am working on finding an cheaper alternative. It was the second one since I arrived, so prayer that they don’t return would be awesome! ☺
Things at the orphanage, have been going pretty well. As usual, we have our on and off days, some more discouraging than others, but I just have to keep practicing my fruits of the spirit. ☺ Patience, patience, patience! But the kids always know how to turn a not so good day into an awesome, just by one simple act of kindness. One of the boys Jonatan, did that last week actually. He is a 13 year old boy, who is a complete joy to be around all the time. He is one of the kids who, no matter what day, can always pull off a smile to remind you why you are there. When we were here last year, his brother Eduardo and himself were very difficult to get pictures of since they were camera shy “apparently” haha! A couple other of the boys were too, but these two especially were hilarious. I have kept a picture of Jonatan from last year in my bible for a long time now, and I had my bible at the orphanage one day last week so I showed him the picture of himself. He was very embarrassed that I had a picture of him and all day tried to teasingly steal my bible away from me to take the picture out. A couple days after that, I was standing in the living room and he comes up to me and hands me an awesome picture of him, sitting in a chair. I complimented him on the picture and went to hand it back to him but he put his hands up. I was really confused so I asked him if it was for me. He replied with a yes and a huge smile on his face, and then turned and walked away. It was awesome! So now I have both the picture from last year and the one he gave me. Apparently that is a pretty big deal that he did something like that so I felt pretty happy about it! ☺ Another cute story from a couple days ago involved my new best friend Karla who is 11 years. She is an absolutely stunning girl, who also makes your heart melt simply with her smile! She is a pretty quiet girl who isn’t very affectionate and usually takes a while for her to warm up to others. My job lately has been to make sure the girls have their chores done and that they are ready for school before lunch time. Karla and I have a very fun, teasing way of this. Whenever I ask about her job or uniform, she says “Nooo Rebecca!” but in a complete joking, teasing way which we have really come to enjoy about each other. I think we have the same type of humor which is why we get along so well. But there has been two memorable times now with her that gave me warm fuzzies. ☺ One was in the morning, when we arrived during breakfast and the second I walked in the door she jumped of from her table, ran over to the door to give me a big hug and went right back to her seat and just sat there with a big smile at me! The second was when we were all standing in our prayer circle before school and right before we started she moved from her spot, came and stood right beside me and wrapped her arms around me the whole prayer. Things like this, make every not-so-good day, completely worth it and are the reason I get out of bed and keep pushing on every day.
We all feel that God is moving in this place a lot, and we are just waiting to see what he has in store for us next.
Prayer Requests:
1) Direction. Pray that God would show Rick, Lisa and I what our next step needs to be to follow his will for our lives and pray that we would continue to be willing, able and strong enough to keep pushing forward because this work can sometimes become very exhausting and emotional.
2) Spanish. Pray that I will continue to keep motivated to study my books, because listening to conversation is helpful, but also not at the same time if you don’t know the meaning of a lot of the words! ☺ Things are slowly improving, but just continued motivation would be great!
3) My Family & Close Friends. It is hard with holiday time approaching, and even harder that I won’t be attending the normal holiday events etc. So pray that everybody will find a sense of peace in knowing I am where I God needs me to be right now! ☺
4) Safety. We are heading tomorrow to the border to renew the papers for the trailer, which is not the safest place in the world for Canadians to be, which Rick has unfortunately experienced first hand. So please pray that all Transito’s (Traffic Police) and Police don’t stop us and that everything runs smoothly with the renewal of the license for the trailers as well.
5) Migraines. Please just pray that they will not become a regular issue for me down here, and that if they do come that they will not cause me to lose days at a time at the orphanage.

Thanks to all who are reading this right now. Your support means SO MUCH to me and is an awesome encouragement. Your prayers are much appreciated as well and I couldn’t be doing this everyday with out all of your prayers. Don’t hesitate to comment or contact me personally if you would like, and if you would like a mailing address too just let me know! My contact info is on the first blog at the bottom.

Thanks again!
Love and miss you all!