I've just added a people we know section onto samespirit so that if I mention someone in my blog, or we mention someone in our updates, you'll be able to see who it is! It will be linked properly from here soon, but for now here you go: on this site or on samespirit
Well we've survived Christmas in Uruguay -actually it was really nice. On Christmas Eve we went to 2 services -one in the barrio and one at the parish, which were both really nice. Although quite exhausting particularly with playing guitar for 2 songs (Cristianos vayamos - to the tune of "Oh Come all Ye faithful" and Nochede Paz - "Silent Night") in each and trying to lead a song when I'd got different words + number of verses to everyone else!! Then we went with Jose and 2 of his grandchildren to his house before going on to the party at their house. The party was nice as it was just us, Jose, Pablo,Carmin and the two children. We watched the children open their presents and then ate party food until it got to midnight. Then we went outside to watch the fireworks which were amazing! Looking over the river to Concordia we could see fireworks going off all across the city. After the fireworks, we went back in for dessert. On Christmas Day we opened our presents and phoned our families first thing in the morning. Then we went to Alba's for Christmas lunch which was: a starter of a sort of swiss roll - but instead of Jam had Olives and Ham (the Uruguayans tend to like combining sweet and savory) followed by chicken with salad and the dessert was lovely - it was strawberry's and pieces of cake in a syrup with some sort of spirits init topped of with cream!
Today I stumbled across Asaphfrom the worship archive forums. It's a program that lets you store songs and chords in a database, with chords and variations on the song. It will show you them, copy them as text and even transpose them!!
While we were in Montevideo, Jorge invited us to go to the provincial youth congress in Chile - a 5 day event for youth leaders. We will be travelling by bus via Buenos Aires and will be a long (The section between Buenos Aires and Santiago is 22 hours) but very scenic journey !The event should be really helpful for us both in language, leadership and spiritually. When we get back, we're going to be starting a youth group here along with a girl who approached Gilberto about one while we were in Montevideo. Tonight Gilberto mentioned the youth group and we told him about the congress and he was really encouraging.
After a nice (but busier than expected) few days in Montevideo, it's nice to be back to Salto. We've got loads of photos from the Synod, some of which will probably be online later on. We managed to meet up with lots of people through the 5 days we were there so it was good. We went to the Noche de los Luces which was a big firework display down by the river.
Well we're off to Montevideo tomorrow for the Synod (A sort of AGM for the diocese as far as I know) It's a 2 day meeting -well 4 on Friday till sometime on Saturday - Hope we get some time to sleep. I probably won't be able to update this till we get back.
BBC News: Uruguay vote rejects oil policy: Unusually, there's an article on BBC News about something that happened in Uruguay!! Everyone here has been talking about the referendum for the last few weeks and there's been graffiti around saying to vote "Si" ever since we arrived! Here in Salto there were 2 processions, the first one with the tambores (see picture) and the second one with hordes of pedestrians with flags chanting something that sounded like an anti US chant followed by cars hooting away. We got the perfect view from our sixth floor balcony over looking the main street.
I did the reading in church for the first time in Spanish today. It went ok, however Gilberto had originally told me a different reading, as he'd got the wrong page in his book of readings. So I'd prepared to read 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13and then when it came to the reading he realised it was a different one! So I ended up reading Philippians 1:1-11instead. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I think I only made one major mistake!
We were on our way back from the cinema, and found ourselves surrounded by football fans - and they filled the whole of the main street - cars, bikes and pedestrians. The most popular team in Salto had won the championship -so the fans were celebrating big time! Even the traffic lights were flashing!
BBC NEWS | UK | Woman jailed for burger attack: "A Texas woman who ran over a McDonald's manager after not getting mayonnaise on her cheeseburger has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Houston."