Sabbath at COVANIC

Because we´re missionaries, we´re expected to help with church. We should know that, but it still surprised us when the pastor came up to us on Friday at lunch and asked which one of us wanted to preach on Sabbath. :D We weren´t sure whether he was kidding or not . . .

We managed to convince him that none of us were up to preaching, but it was a little scary for a while. We did, however, help with Sabbath School by reading en espanol from Ellen White about the activities in the New Earth. (We were practicing our parts for a few days before). And then the pastor asked for volunteers to lead songs during the baptism. No one spoke up. Ruth and I looked at each other and said, ¨Hey, we can sing.¨ So we did. We stood up front and the people told us which songs to sing, and we announced them. Of course, we didn´t know the songs, so the people in the front row actually started them. We just pretended we knew what we were singing. Still, there we were, leading songs we didn´t know in a language we don´t speak fluently. Pretty cool experience, really.

After church, the pastor asked us to help lead the youth service in the afternoon. We thought he meant we should plan the whole thing, so we spent a few hours planning songs, games, Bible verses . . . When we got there, we discovered they already had a plan and they just wanted us to jump in and help. Since only Jenny is fluent in Spanish, that´s not exactly easy for us to do. The lady in charge kept grabbing my arm and talking to me really intensely in Spanish. Sometimes I can understand when people speak Spanish to me, but I had no idea what she was saying. I kept telling her, ¨No intiendo [I don´t understand].¨ Apparently she thought if she just talked louder and faster I´d understand what she wanted. :P With Jenny´s help, she finally got me to lead songs I didn´t know again. :D

We also played Sword Drill with our Bibles (the game where you have to look up a Bible verse faster than everyone else). That´s another one that´s harder with the language barrier. Not all Bible books sounds the same in Spanish and English. :P

I´m pretty impatient with the language barrier right now. I can tell I´m getting better at Spanish, but too slowly! And when we get to Francia Sirpi, we´ll have a whole ´nother language to learn. We started last week--some of the students here speak Miskito. We spent one evening trying to learn Miskito from them by means of our limited Spanish. The dean was also tranlating for us between Spanish and English, so we were speaking three languages for about half an hour. It made my head spin. :P

I forgot to say last time--for those of you who know Josh Enevoldson, Jeremy Meyer that I´m working with is his cousin. And another SM, Christina Tozer, knows Angela Gaedke from Camp Wawona. It´s nice to have friends in common.

We fly out to Puerto Cabezas (Port) tomorrow, and then we´ll go to Francia Sirpi, where the real adventure begins. I don´t know how soon I´ll be able to post again--maybe from Port. When I post from Francia, it will be short posts with no pictures. I´ll try to get pictures on soon, but I haven´t gotten that together yet and I can only do it from Port.

Don´t let that discourage you, though--send me an email, letter, package, whatever! And keep praying--it should be crazy organizing the clinic and figuring out life in Francia. Also, it sounds like Dawn Zimmerman is hurt pretty badly--I think they had to do sugery on her knee to get the gravel out.

I miss you all! Much love from Nic :)