¡Exclamation Points!

Today is my last day of school. I am on my break so I´ve only got an hour left and then I am done. It´s a little annoying to think that I just did 40 hours of Spanish in 2 weeks and I will not receive any college credit for this. Instead of being 4 credits closer to graduating, I just know a bit more spanish. I suppose that should be rewarding in itself though.

Tyler and I are doing a lot of pushups now. We did 250 on Wednesday and are trying to do 300 today. So far we´ve done 170 today. I´m excited to do a ton of more push ups and then get back to the states and fall back into a state of stagnation where I don´t do anything to get stronger.

So since people have been telling me I don´t write about anything interesting, I am going to write about a certain character we met named mario. Last weekend we spent a majority of the weekend with a friend of Emil´s named Mario. Mario is 48, from Guatemala, and very rich. He is the one who made us wake up at 4:30 to go on that hike. On the hike, Mario basically ran the entire time. Since he never had a daughter he loved having Shannon around and made her keep up with him the whole time. Also he would speak insanely fast which was very difficult for Tyler and me to understand, which made us feel kind of stupid.

Mario took very good care of us and fed us very well, which we are very grateful for. He actually fed us a little too well. You had to finish whatever you put on your plate or whatever Mario put on your plate, which was usually a lot more then you could handle. I´ve never eaten as much as I did that weekend.

One night for dinner we had rabbit. Mario told Tyler to cook the rabbit and Tyler asked me to help him. He didn´t tell us where the rabbit was, what the rabbit looked like, or how to prepare it. Luckily some Guatemalan women came into the kitchen and took over.

Staying at Mario´s was quite an experience. Emil told us that the point of spending so much time with Mario was to see that Guatemala is not just a country in total poverty. There are people who are very well off. This kinf of put the country in a different light for me. I can see how it is very difficult to get out of poverty, but I also saw opportunity this weekend. This makes it a little more difficult to define my mission for a country like this. I mean the mission is to help the people here. The question is how do we help them. Maybe just pray for clarity for Tyler, Shannon, and me on that topic.

This is our last night in Antigua so we will be starting to live in a much more difficult situation soon. I want to be used and I want to keep my spirits high while also having a soft heart for what God does. I don´t know if I´ll get to a computer soon, but I will try.

-Colter