I hope to see more of these around here! This particular batch I bought from a man bicycling around with a cart. Tim made what I have fondly named "strawberry hot pockets" and we've been eating them raw, too.

Monday, by the way, has been lovely. I am doing all the normal things I do on Mondays- planning the menu, writing a grocery shopping list, looking over what I have to do this week, resting. So normal! We took the dogs to the beach this morning (the first time in a while) and they are spent. Much to the relief of my slippers.

Our first two lessons were "Who is the Holy Spirit?" and "What does the Holy Spirit do?" After that we had a discussion time together. Besides talking about the Holy Spirit, we discussed the idea of a conversion experience and I told them some about my story. We came back again and again to the idea that this life Jesus offers them really is about life and not rules or being a good person, a concept they and others here are very very slow to understand.

After the discussion, we sent them off to reflect. I gave them some questions to think about in case they didn't know what to do during that time, and it was sweet to see them all thinking and writing (we had given them pens and notebooks as part of a pack of retreat presents). At the end of that time, my housekeeper said to me, "Everything I wrote was from the heart." The visiting South America Mission summer team (college age people) fixed and ate lunch with us and afterward played volleyball out on the beach with the group. I think it was a good time for the Alpha people to connect with other Christians than Tim and I and to see that they could have fun together. They were "in."

After volleyball (during which I napped!) we watched the lesson on "How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?" We ended the retreat after the video with a time of prayer. We let them pray on their own for a while and then went around and asked each of them how we could pray for them (and did it). Three of them were in tears by the end of it, the guy in the front of the photo included. Based on what he's said and the changes we have seen in him, I'm pretty confident that he's made a decision to leave his life of drugs, parties, and self and to follow Jesus. Remarkable.

After the retreat, we went directly to the Comunidad worship service, which the Summer Team was "putting on" while they're here. Mr. Front of the Photo came along, his first time I think. It was neat to see how his connection with the Summer Team during the day made a bridge for his to come to the service. We sang "Mighty to Save," which we've done in Alpha and he knows, and then Cesar spoke for a moment on Galatians 5 (dealing with the Holy Spirit). Coincidence? No. I was in tears myself thinking of how precious this God is that He orchestrates all things for His purposes and was using all these fun ways to reach out to my neighbor.

We are exhausted but so happy. I find it surprising every day that God would let even me be part of this and see people's lives being transformed.

Last night we had a goodbye party for her that turned into total chaos, although I still think people enjoyed themselves. In our living room and dining room I'd say we had over 50 guests at once. Maybe more like 75. It was sweet to see how much people value and love her-- children, teens, people our age, "grown-ups" and wiser.

I think this next season (week? few weeks? month? we'll see) will be challenging as I adjust to living and working without her.

Every once in a while I have to go to a long or boring meeting. The only way to combat this problem is food. I am definitely of the opinion that almost all meetings should involve snacks (and usually sweet ones). In preparation for the Comunidad Cristiana Board of Directors meeting tonight, I made Martha Stewart lemon squares. They were pretty easy and very successful. If you have any boring meetings coming up, I'd definitely suggest them.

After going about 10 years without setting off fireworks, this last Friday I decided to buy some fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July. Every month or so we hear a few fired so I figured they were relatively easy to find.

As always I started asking where I could find the fireworks by talking to a few taxi drivers. Finally one told me to ask the fat man who drives the red taxi in Puerto, that he knew where to get them. I found him and he took me to a nearby town, stopped and pointed to house and told me they were in there. I knocked on the door and an old lady answered and mumbled something about her son now working in Supe (not Puerto Supe) and that there were no fireworks in the house. The taxi proceeded to take me to another house and after knocking a few times and no answering, a boy was yelling at me that the guy was down the street and then ran to get him for me.

When the guy finally showed up, he started asking me what kind of fireworks I wanted. I had no idea what to call them in english much less in spanish so I asked him if he could show them to me. He then began to describe the different ones and the prices for them. Still being a bit confused, I asked him if I could just see what he had. He said ok and took into his house into a room full of cardboard boxes, bags of gun powder and cardboard tubes. I then realized why he seemed a bit concerned when I told him I wanted the fireworks the same day. He had to make them all by hand. The photo above is of his shop which is open to his bedroom.

He showed me a few different parts of the fireworks to try to help me understand what I would be getting and then showed me a few piles of different gun powder and asked which I wanted (it turns out they had to do with color and I think type of explosion). I finally just ordered based on price thinking the cheaper would be puny and the more expensive would be larger. So I got a few dozen of the cheapest and medium priced fireworks.

When I went to pick them up a few hours later, once again I was surpised. I'm used to fireworks being 18"-24" tall and shooting them out of glass bottles. These were huge! Each one was at least 4 ft tall and had a bamboo shoot for a pole.

That night we went over to the Cubas's house and shot them off of their roof. It was pretty exciting and although there a few that exploded pretty close to the ground, no one got hurt. The next day the fireworks seemed to be the talk of the town and almost everyone I ran into were asking me if I'd shot them off (this include mini-market owners and random people I didn't know). I think I may have shot off a lot more than was normal for people around here.

I'm already scheming of another show on Christmas eve (that's the time of year they shoot off fireworks down here) and hoping to get people to donate to it so we can buy a few hundred of the big rockets and do a show off the end of the pier and everyone can come down to the beach to see it. We'll see.