Yesterday I rang up American Airlines to find out if we could change the route of our flight or not, and they got so far with it, even found all the details for our tickets on their computer and then decided that they needed to see the actual tickets! So I asked if fax would be acceptable, but no, so here I am in Montevideo. The plan is to post some of our stuff back home from here too as it should be more reliable. Hopefully we'll be able to change the route of our flights to go back via Sao Paulo instead of Miami, as that would be a much shorter route, and wouldn't have to spend as long waiting around. Just have to see what they say today, and how much they want to charge me for it. Although looking on their website, the other route looked cheaper than the route we've currently got tickets for - so hopefully that means we should be able to do it :)

Yesterday I looked at Pentecost with the kids - firstly I asked them "what day is it tomorrow?" and got answers such as Palm Sunday, or Day of selling 'Pasteles'! When I told them it was Pentecost, only one of them could say it and had to teach the others - despite most of them having been in the church for at least 2 years! We went on to look at Acts 2:1-13 and talked about what had happened - which went well. Then I asked them who the Holy Spirit is - to which the first answer was God, which I was pleased with. We then followed on by looking at John 16 - where Jesus told the disciples of the work of the Spirit. In the end they seemed to have a good understanding of the basics about Pentecost - we'll see next week how much they remember. At the end we finished off by doing pictures of Pentecost using tissue paper as tongues of fire.

Snudge and Des

We had a really encouraging home group on Tuesday this week - it was an answer to prayer! The group has decided to meet ever week, whether or not Gilberto (the vicar) is around. This shows quite a growth for the group, as they are always very reliant on him, and the studies often just end up to be him preaching. It was a really good study on John 1:35-42 - where Andrew goes and tells his brother Simon Peter that they've found the Messiah. It led onto all sorts of things in the area of how can we encourage growth in the church by different ways of inviting people - both within the existing congregation and outside. It was also interesting afterwards to here some of the concerns of the people in the group, and to realise that the same concerns are found here as back home - the small group who appear to do everything without any credit and keep getting given more to do, and the larger group whose involvement is restricted to services.

The study also made me think about the phrase that John used: "The Lamb of God" - What would it have meant to the people at the time? Would it have been understood in the same way as we do? Clearly the Jews would have know of the lamb as the sacrifice at the passover, but would they have made any link between this and a person being referred to as "Lamb of God"? It obviously had an impact on John's followers, but they'd heard his other teachings about Jesus, and his testimony of Jesus' baptism.

Today I preached in Spanish for the first time up at the chapel. The passages were 1 Samuel 12:19-25 and John 17:20-26. While I was preparing it in the week I was very nervous, but once I'd got it finished, translated with Laura's expert help and read it through a couple of times I felt much more confident! You can read it on our website: English or Spanish. Preaching up there was interesting, as people often find it difficult to understand my Spanish, as I can't roll my R's enough for them to notice them, however I think most people followed at least some of it, and were appreciative.

Today I took the Catechesis for the first time on my own, which was quite nerve-racking, but once I started it was quite enjoyable. I started off by looking a bit at Communion - what it is, why we celebrate it, what it meant to each of them and why they want to take communion. It was interesting to hear their opinions and ideas. One of the reasons for taking communion I was given was "so I can go to youth group". After a brief discussion on these things, we went on to have a look what the Paul had written regarding the Lord's supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17-29, which was useful to get the point across to them that it was something serious.

After this we went on to the week's planned study which was on Luke 1:26-56 when the angel came to Mary to foretell Jesus' birth. At this point a lot of them got distracted by what was going on in the other room with the younger kids making cards for Mothers day, probably because it had been quite a strenuous study anyway - well something to learn from for next time.

Well I'm now 23! It's a bit strange having my birthday in autumn instead of spring, but it's quite nice! I love the autumn colours, and it's also great to see a different place in autumn. Unfortunatly, it's been very cloudy these last few days though, so I missed getting a photo of the yellow leaves against the blue sky, but this should do for now! It was a really nice birthday, although any post from England still hasn't got here - so it'll be a long birthday :). In the morning I opened my presents from Laura - she got me Lee Strobel's A Case for Christ, Love Actually on DVD, a pen, notebook, some sweets and later on in the day, a scarf. We then went out to a restaurant that we'd not tried before - we both had Chicken with salad, and didn't know what to expect. The salad turned out to be a sort of apple and cheese coleslaw and was really tasty.

Then in the evening I had a small joint birthday party with Alba with a few people from the church which was lovely. It's the most fun I'd ever seen with re-lighting candles (that Laura had got for the cake!), as no-one there had seen them before :D.

It's suddenly got cold here in Salto! I've gone from walking around in shorts and t-shirt to wearing a fleece and jeans. We've had to put the 2 blankets on the bed rather than just sheets as we'd got used to, and last night we decided that we could do with a hot water bottle. So we used Sprite bottles filled with hot water - which actually did the job quite well!!

Although it feels quite cold it's actually been quite a nice break from the heat. It's like a crisp sunny winters day back in England - although probably not that cold and it's still quite warm in the sun.

This morning at Escuelita some of the kids were terribly behaved! It's been a long time since they have been, but I guess this week with it having rained a lot, and there being a lot more kids there it probably made quite a difference. We were looking at the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and how they had a contest to prove which god was real. They each prepared a bull to sacrifice and then put it on the altar and prayed. After the prophets of Baal had been praying for a day, nothing happened. When Elijah set up his altar to the Lord, they tipped water on it, and then he called out to the Lord. The Lord answered by fire, and the sacrifice, wood, stones and soil were burnt up.

With the kids, we'd cut out hills, rocks and flames from paper for them each to make their own picture of the altar of the Lord.

Also today I've created some more icons to add to my portfolio pages - Symbols of Uruguay, currently there are only four as you can see below, but I'll probably make some more later.

Jon told me to:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From the NIV translation of the Bible:

As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" > >