el sabado- 24th de junio

saturday-rest day! nope, not for us! our new friends areli and jazmin were taking us on a walk. teh day before jazmin went with megan and i to the deportivo. it has a nice gravel track that we can run on in the morning, it's safe, as you have to pay 3 pesos to get in, abotu 30 cents. i'm very thankful for it!

anyway, we went on a walk to the national park near xochis. we saw many burros, turkeys, horses, and people playing soccer. the national park was pretty with its beautiful waterfalls and coutryside. when we arrived to the park there were about 50 women doing their laundry in the water. it was actually set up for them and the park arranged drying lines and everything. it was amazing and of course, everybody stared at us =)

on the walk back we stopped at the technologico, a university here, to meet with some students. that morning mike and i met an english teacher on the road on the way to buy water. he wanted us to stop by and talk with the students. it was fun, they were in their beginning levels and only could ask basic questions but i think they loved the interaction. we received a lot of information about why its so easy to travel illegally to the u.s. for example, on july 4th, there isn't anyone doing car checks, hmmm . . .

this was a full day, so after comida, mike and i went to the wood house to watch mexico play against argentina. we are brasil fans so we had to cheer for mexico extra hard-argentina is their big rival. unfortunately, mexico lost but it did make the streets safer. there were a lot less fireworks!! it seems like somebody sneezing is reason enough to have a fireworks celebration here!! then mike went home to rest and i went with barbara and two other american nurses staying with her to visit the city. we walked down main street, saw some beautiful churches, shopped for tortilla towels, looked at the local merchants. we also visited the graves of tim woods parents. they were the first missonaries down here and tragically died in a plane crash. barbara said it has always been known that a bomb caused the crash. when the first woods arrived here nobody would even give them a place to stay becasue they were christians. but eventually the town grew to love them and i guess their funeral was a wonderful celebration of life. on tim's father's grave, it says the verse about how the word will never return void. it was amazing to stand there and know that though they died, the hospital still goes on and there are now three presbyterian churches in ometepec along with many others now =) their life was not in vain and now tim is back continuing the work. it made me think a lot of my friend brianna, all she wanted to do was serve the lord and she died doing just that in Nigeria. i know that people are still touced by her story and her memory will certainly never leave me.

well, i better go-this has been a lot of typing!

that ALL the nations may hear . . .