There's no Place like "home"

Alright, here's the promised update about my time in Maracaibo and Aruba.....

The week we spent in Maracaibo was first and foremost HOT! However, all the buildings there have air conditioning, so obviously we spent a majority of the time inside. Maracaibo is affectionately nicknamed La Tierra del Sol Amada, Land of the Loving Sun......it's hot and humid, quite a difference for those of us from the Northwest. Anyway, most of the week was spent in meetings (it was our National Staff Conference) with all the staff from all over Venezuela (both Venezuelans and the US Staff). The staff did a great job trying to make the meetings interesting despite their length and the amount of material that was necessary to cover. Themes and events included a dinner in which we traveled to the past and were forced to eat with our hands (for any of those of you who know me....I mean, I eat my chips with chopsticks, I'm not much of a hands-on eater....), numerous clips from Princess Bride and Star Wars, a blindfolded dart game, and a day at the pool! Best of all, however, was Thursday, which was Thanksgiving!!!! Now, as you can imagine - they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Venezuela.....but, because we were with all of the US staff, we got to have a huge Thanksgiving dinner and celebration anyway! We sang the national anthem and some patriotic songs, explained Thanksgiving to all our Venezuelan friends who joined us, and more importantly mowed down on some amazing food. Even though not all the ingredients could be found here, and many substitutions were made, the food resembled "normal" Thanksgiving food enough, it was fabulous! We topped off the evening my all saying what we were thankful for :)

A couple other great things about Maracaibo: we got to meet a bunch of new Venezuelans (staff and students) and hang out with them, we got started on planning the Congreso Nacional that will happen in March - Prueba de Fuego is going to be really awesome! Ivan and Eben went ice-skating, it was really entertaining to watch, and we got to go to a mall - A REAL ONE!, and I bought some awesome earrings....

Aruba, Jamaica, oooooh I wanna take ya (Beatles). After our time in Maracaibo, we headed (all of the US staff) to Aruba for a few days of relaxing and prepping to go back to ministry in Merida, and MOST importantly, renewing our VISAS so the Venezuelan government will LET us stay in VZ Aruba is a small island (only 16 miles across the whole thing) and it is only about 12 miles off the coast of Venezuela. It is owned by the Netherlands. Most people there speak at least 3 languages (English, Spanish, and Papiamento - which is a mix of English, Spanish, Dutch, and a native language). Papiamento is a pretty fun language to listen to, but it was also nice to have a week of speaking English!! They use two kinds of currency there: dollars and florens. Most of our time was spent on the beach, relaxing. We also had staff meetings every afternoon and got to do some pretty good devotionals and decompressing after a couple months straight of ministry. Also, I got my Christmas present from my parents early - they gave me the money to go snorkeling! Our team spent one day on the ship "The Jolly Pirate" which took us to three different snorkeling spots (one of the them over a sunken WWII ship! scaryyyyyyyy!). It was a really cool experience, the water in Aruba is sooooo salty you hardly even have to try and swim. All in all it was a great time of relaxing, but after a few days I was definitely ready to come "home"! It was hard for me spending over 2 weeks away from my friends and home here in Merida....I am thrilled to be back!

A couple unpleasant stories (there was very little even remotely unpleasant, however....) from Aruba: Amanda cracked her head open on the rental van the first evening we were there, causing some panic in all of us, especially the jefes, I got a haircut (thinking it would be wiser there than in VZ where no one speaks English) however, I somehow managed to find a lady who didn't speak more than 3 sentences in English....ahhhh! In the end, I look like a female trucker with REALLY short bangs - I think I'll be wearing my hair up for a while :(

Anyway, I'm happy to be home, although our two weeks away were fantastic....thanks for all your prayers!