Really now – can you think of anything better than baptisms? What a fantastic day, this past Sunday! A celebration of the grace of God. Check it out!
Our church met at the home of our friends, the Casteels. Our pastor performed the baptisms, and we had a guest speaker from our church, Ariel Segura, speaking on Ephesians 2.
Today at school they had some Mexican dancers, and I thought you might like to have a look. I would have taken more shots, but I was on my last set of batteries, and they were low, so I was rationing!
Each of the different outfits represents the traditional dress of a different state of Mexico. The white and blue outfits are from Yucatán, I believe… the cowboy outfits from the north, and so on.
I’ve done my share of improvising.
One day I took Hannah to Sunday School in Calgary, and there was no teacher. So I taught a Sunday School lesson, crafts and all. How did it go? Ask the kids. You remember the time I lost the song I was going to sing, and I did one I hadn’t practised.
Many years ago I was in Apatzingan, Mexico. I had only an hour to prepare a sermon. I sat down to get started, when someone came to tell me that we had misunderstood when the service was – it was now! Somehow the Lord got me through that one! At least that time it was in English (I was being translated).
Last week we were talking about some Christian history topics in conversation class. I brought in a timeline so that we could see some things in context. I was being asked about some numbers on my timeline, and I said they were just for a seminar I taught (2000 Years of Missions). "Oh, you should teach us!" Ha ha, sure. I don’t have nearly enough Spanish for such a thing. Maybe in a few years.
"No, really – you should teach us. What do you think?" "Sure, yeah, he should".
Yeah, hah hah… whatever you want.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? After all my joking affirmation, my teacher was making plans and asking what I needed and planning where we could do it. So this week, apparently, I have 8 hours of teaching time (2 hours each day- today, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). After I’d said sure, whatever you want so many times, I wasn’t sure how to refuse.
Now, of course, I won’t really be teaching. I’ll be standing there introducing topics and asking how to say this and that. I’m the one who knows the least Spanish in the class, and of course I’ll need words that aren’t in the dictionary – names, places, terminology.
It’s ok, not only have I improvised before, I’ve also embarrassed myself before. Often. Daily. I’m used to it. And now I can do it for 8 solid hours. They teach conversation in this school – why don’t they have a course on keeping your mouth shut?
This post was inspired by a post by Andrew Comings in which he shared this video of Danish musician and comedian Victor Borge. Talk about improvisation. Borge was a brilliant musician, and could think fast even at 80 years old. Of course, he already knew the language – of music…
Yesterday was not a typical day, but since there’s no such thing I thought I’d tell you briefly about a sample day. I guess on a typical day I’d be in language school, but since I have the week off, things are a bit different.
Some things I did today: Took the kids to the fruit market for some fruit & veggies, tried to check what was wrong with our car air conditioning (no go – I guess it’s the mechanic’s turn), worked on some health insurance issues, sent out some email updates (that didn’t work the first time), answered some emails, played snap with Hannah, played basketball with Nathanael (briefly – short attention span), watered our garden, cleaned in the house, and lots more – can’t remember it all.
But the big activity of the day was going swimming – the first time we’ve been swimming since arriving. We went down the road to our friends’ house. And in my opinion, the pool was CoLDddd! But we had a little swim anyway. It was fun, and I took some video for you.
This Sunday our congregation at Iglesia Bíblica El Renuevo, celebrated 4 years together…
It doesn't usually rain during dry season. But much to everyone's surprise, it's rained actually a few times since we've been in Cuernavaca.
But today beat all – not only a downpour, but hail. When we went outside, we could see our breath – it was that cold. I just had to take some video of our yard…