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?" > >

Just a recipe I cooked for tea tonight!

Ingredients

chicken pieces (1/2 chicken breast cut into bit size pieces)

• 100ml double cream

• mustard

• 2 garlic cloves

• 1/4 green pepper

• 1/2 small zapallito (or courgette)

• sweetcorn

• few leaves fresh parsley

• sprinkle of oregano

• dash of cumin

fry the chicken and garlic in olive oil, after a few minutes, add the mustard and mix in well

once the chicken is cooked, add the cream and the herbs

leave cooking until the cream starts to bubble, then add the vegetables

4. cook for a few minutes and serve with rice

This morning we took the kids from the Escuelita upto Parque Solari as an Easter treat. It was a really nice time, as it was cooler than it has been - so not too hot for running around. A lot of them had home-made kites with them, made from plastic bags and sticks- which flew very well. It's a common thing for Holy Week here in Uruguay, for people to fly kites.

We went to the local Zoo with the youth group today, as they're on holiday from school. It was nice, but quite a contrast to seeing the animals up at Iguazu. They all seemed to be in really small cages, apart from the deer, �andu and goats. The peacocks all had had their feathers cut off - possibly for selling for carnival costumes. The kids all seemed to enjoy the trip and have lots of fun, and we finished off with a ride on the spinning swings (don't know what to call it!), which was interesting as it appeared to be powered by little propellers, one on each side!

We arrived back in Concordia on time, even though there had been some problems with the bus causing us to have to change buses at midnight. As the bus doesn't enter Concordia on the way back and just stops at a road junction outside of town we had been worried about how we would get in, but fortunately there was a remisse there, and we could get a lift in to the bus station (10 pesos) after dropping off one of the others sharing it on the way. At the bus station we were just in time for the bus to Salto, just got our tickets and could get straight on the bus.

In the afternoon we did some major food shopping and discovered that they would deliver it to our flat for free for us - it just took a bit longer than we'd expected, so I ended up missing the service while waiting for it to arrive!