Busy Week

     It has been a very busy few weeks with teams here at Esperanza Viva.  This week we had our first mission team from the states.  We have had three work teams here in the past month who were here totally to work out on the land.  A mission team is one that comes, and although they do some work out on the land or some other work project in the morning, they do activities with the kids and their main focus is the kids.  We love working with the teams that come down.  We enjoy helping out with the activities and it really helps my Spanish.  The team that was here this week did some really cool activities.  Several of their activities were food related.  They made trees from ice cream cones, frosting and sprinkles, popcorn was then used to look like snow.  They also made edable play-dough out of peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey.  Erin enjoys participating in the activities.

Edible trees.

Edible play-dough

Jonathan preferred to spend some time in the tree. 

     Last Sunday we had the treat of watching the Vikings vs. the Saints play-off game with the two groups that were here.  We all watched it at the Nielsen's house and had pizza.  Many of the missionaries here are from Minnesota so they were cheering for the Vikings.  But some of the work team were cheering for the Saints so it was a great game with lots of shouting as the teams went back and forth.  Unfortunately, the Vikings lost but we all had a great time.

    This weekend we also have "Es Tiempo de Entregarse" or "Time to Surrender."  We have speakers coming from Mexico and the United States.  It is a free conference that is being held at Nations Church tonight, tomorrow and ending on Sunday after the regular service.  We have four men from the Encouragers Team from our church in the states that have come and we are looking forward to seeing them.  Three of these men have been to another Es Tiempo here at Nations but this will be our first time attending one of the Es Tiempo conferences.  We are excited to see what God will do.  Both Jim and I have been helping out in whatever way we can for the conference.  We have been doing a lot of driving and I helped out with the tickets. 

We have also had some awesome views of the moon this week both during the day and at night. 

Jonathan was really in awe of the moon out during the day. 

Then last night, as Jim and I were walking, we saw this view.  It's a little hard to see but if you look close, there is a huge ring around the moon towards the bottom edge of the picture.  It was very visible in person.  It is awesome to see all the wonders that God allows us to see in this world we live in.