Some Ramblings

David had a great time yesterday afternoon at a soccer practice with some local kids who play together twice a week. David did well, and it was fun to see him getting along with the other kids and talking in Spanish with them. I was able to talk in Spanish for about an hour and a half with a really nice guy named Oscar who is enrolled in a seminary. After the practice we got a ride back to the main road in the back of a pick up truck with about 20 other people. On the way down a big hill, I mentioned to David that we would probably not be doing this again when we return home!

Yesterday afternoon I had such a fun surf session. I surfed for an hour and 15 minutes, but it seemed like 3 hours. I got some great waves, and I surfed well. I surfed to the side of a crowd, and I caught all the waves that I wanted to go on. The last couple of days have been smaller (only 1-2 feet overhead). It is still really powerful, but it is very playful compared to the earlier days. I have been able to surf on my shorter board. On most of the surfing adventures in my life, I have had my good friend and brother Brad with me. I have missed him. He is so fun to surf/hang with and he always gets me fired up to surf better and charge harder plus we always have good laughs together. Yesterday I was thinking a lot of how much fun it would be to have him here and I was also thinking about how hard he would have been ripping during that session. As a side note, I pulled into a big right (about 3 feet overhead) the other morning and got a big heavy tube, but I did not come out (next time).

At church on Sunday I met a guy named Willy who has only been a Christian for about 3 months. He surfs a lot and we are going to surf together soon. He also offered to go on a little surf adventure with me to some really good breaks that we will need to get to via bus.

We have been having fun times at the beach with our kids. On Saturday afternoon we were at this one beach, and it started raining really hard. We kept swimming for a while (the beach water was warmer than the outside temperature) and then we finally got a ride back to our house. On Sunday we went to a different beach, and we took a boat ride. We found some big turtles in the ocean. I jumped into the water with Victor, our "captain". We swam with the turtle for a while and then he brought him up on the boat so the kids could touch him. Based on the large size of the turtle, Hector guessed that he was over 100 years old! It was a really fun boat ride, and toward the end of the ride David told me, "This is going to be one of my favorite memories. I'm going to write 3 pages in my journal about today."

Our Spanish is coming along. Krista and I are trying to take a lot of time to study and we are also trying to talk mostly in Spanish. We are also watching movies and news in Spanish. David and Andrew have been completing lessons on our Rosetta Stone computer program, which helps to reinforce what they have been learning.

This week: tonight I'm going to a Bible study in Spanish. Tomorrow we are going to the beach with our new friends (Krista mentioned Sherry and all of her kids in an earlier blog) after classes. On Thursday afternoon, this guy named Mondo is going to take us to the orphanage. This should be a good experience for all of us. They have about 20 kids at this orphanage.

Krista and I had a fun time talking last night about what it is going to be like to be back home. We feel like this is such a great opportunity to prayerfully re-evaluate our committments back home and how we live.

As soon as Johnny wakes up from his nap, we are going to walk down to the beach and enjoy a couple smoothies (agua fresca).

Hasta pronto,
Chris