We arrived in Antigua on Sunday, July 24th, only to discover that the school didn't arrange for a homestay for us, like we asked, and that there were no classes on Monday because of a holiday in Antigua. Thankfully there was 1 room left at the school - praise the Lord! - so we took it.
We decided to take advantage of our day off and we made a trip to the coast. We only got lost two or three times and what was supposed to be a simple 2 hour drive took over 3 hours. We never did actually find the spot we were looking for, but we did find the beach and enjoyed a couple of hours of fun in the sun, sand and surf. The trip home was pretty uneventful, in comparison to the way there and we made it back to the school in under 2 hours. Overall it was a good day. The scenery through Escuintla is amazing - field after field of sugar cane as far as the eye can see. It is a little like Saskatchewan grain fields!
Tuesday morning we started classes. Because Monday was a holiday, our days were increased from 4 hours to 5! The first day, I thought I was going to lose my mind! The last hour of instruction was almost a waste of time. There is something incredibly difficult about going back to school. I don't know if it is that as we age, it is more difficult to learn new things, or if we are just unaccustomed to this type of learning. Whatever the reason, language school is hard work.
Don't get me wrong - I want to learn - it is just a lot of work and I often feel like I have to start all over again. This time around, I am learning all of the things I have been doing wrong. I am at the stage in my language development that I can understand a fair amount, but my speech is way behind my understanding. I suppose that is normal - frustrating, but normal. Anyway, I don't really use any tenses other than present correctly. I simply add on the time frame of an action to give it tense instead of deciding how to conjugate the verb. That has the been the area my teacher is focussing on. Rocky is at the table just behind me and I can hear him speaking Spanish! That is awesome. His goal this time was not to allow himself to default to English when it started to get tough, and he isn't taking the easy way out. That will help him tremendously.
We actually only have one more day of classes, tomorrow, and then we will be readying ourselves to pick up the next team. We are excited to see the Lighthouse gang again. We sure enjoyed them last year and know they will be a lot of fun again. We are also really blessed to have an entire team devoted to medical clinics. We won't be involved in the clinics, but the group will join us for all of the cultural/spiritual activities we do with the Lighthouse team.
I know the Lord has good things planned for both of these groups. There have been some challenges in organizing things for them, and I know when the enemy tries to frustrate us or take our focus off of the Lord and direct it to the challenges, it is because God is planning something big. I am excited to see what that is and be a part of it. Pray for us as we really get busy now. We have teams back to back (and overlapping) between now and the end of October. Pray for an abundance of health, wisdom, patience, and love to be evident in our lives as we serve the teams and the Guatemalans we work with.
Blessings on you!
Karren
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