As most of you know, I have had some trying times since my last trip down to CdE. Yet, after an uplifting and reminding sermon at Seven:Ten, I was able to go down with the right attitude. I constantly reminded myself that they are the authorities that God has put in charge, and I needed to accept that. I took time when we first got down there to speak to them and share my heart and clear up any misunderstandings. Everything is going very well now, and I am so blessed that I had the opportunity to speak to them and have the time with them that I did.

Now for the rest of the updates... :)

When we were driving down there, we saw 2 fires on the side of the road. They were both by that plant nursery that I spoke about earlier. We went to the orphanage only to see what we should do about that... Part of me felt ignorant for even driving the extra 10 km to ask someone who would know. Well, we found out that they don't have a fire department, and that people just randomly start fires. Somehow, they are always contained. They didn't spread at all.

After we found out about that, we went to town to have some churros. When we approached the churro stand, there was a lady there with her son. I heard the little boy say the word "sponsor" and then her reply was "no". I then realized that he was talking about me and I interrupted their conversation to correct her and tell her that her son was correct. I told her that I go to the orphanage and that I know her son because he plays baseball with the boys at the orphanage and that I sponsor Jesus Humberto. She then replied with "Ohhhh Humberto!" Yep, she loves my boy. :) Anywho, Ramon remembered my name and I spoke to them for a couple of minutes. It was so awesome to be able to have a whole conversation with someone in the community and meet a mom of one of the "neighborhood" boys.

Immediately after that, I decided we should "cruise the square" like the locals. (We had to do something to entertain ourselves since the kids were in bed.) Yet, when I turned, I thought I saw one of the orphan boys. I pulled over the car, rolled down my window, and said hi to Cristian. Jessica got out of the car and hugged him, then I followed and I did my usual where I picked him up and kissed him on the cheek. He was with 2 friends and there were 3 other boys on a bench watching us (all of the boys were around 9-12). After I put him down and started talking to him, I leaned against my car and realized it wasn't him. I continued on though in case it was him... and asked him to get in the car so I can take him to CdE. After trying to make sure it wasn't him and talking to them for close to 5 minutes, I finally got back into my car to drive away, and that's when it happened... The boys fell onto the sidewalk and were laughing and rolling around. After discussing this with the other people on the trip, they thought I shouldn't share the story of me trying to pick up on random kids off of the street, but oh well. I thought it was kind of funny anyway. We all make mistakes, right?

The rest of the trip was awesome. I have to say that parts of it felt like a Super Nanny or Nanny 911 show. There were definitely times that the kids and I had to get used to things. One of the new rules is that they can't use my camera. They are now only allowed to even look at the pictures when I am flipping through them and the camera is in my hands. It's a change, but I definitely see the reason for it. Hopefully, this will help when other Americans come down too. I kept 221 pictures this weekend on Ben's camera, and I've already created a new slide show. My camera is such a piece of crap... But hey, maybe after the kids can't use it anymore the shutter button will actually stay on.

One last thing... My spanish is improving. I still don't understand a lot, but I find that I am able to use different words to get my point across and I am understanding some more. Praise God! I still need Adrian to translate at times, but one time he told me, "Just pretend like you understand like you always do." Dang it, I guess I don't fool everyone!