Two More Weeks...

It is so hard to believe that we now have less than two weeks here in Montevideo.
I'm excited to come home and see everyone, but I know I'm going to miss South America a TON.

People here have been getting ready for Christmas for the past couple weeks, which has felt so weird since it is now summer here.. And it definitely feels like it! The past few days it has been in the lower to mid 90's outside. Since they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here, they do not have a starting point to begin putting out decorations.
Speaking of, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home!!! We aren't celebrating Thanksgiving until tomorrow. Weird, I know, but it is because of our Ministry in Latin America class. About half of us have been taking this class since last friday, and today was our last day. Our teacher, Bio (pronounced Bee-you) flew here from his home in Brazil and has been teaching it as an intensive week-long course. It has been a busy week, but Bio is an amazing teacher and we have all been so blessed to have him here with us. I'm going to be sad to see him leave tomorrow morning.

Yesterday morning was an interesting day for our Ministry class. We were instructed to pair up with one other person and go out onto the streets and find two homeless people to ask a list of questions we were given. At first, this made me extremely nervous and even a little angry. I was not comfortable with approaching a random homeless person and asking them questions like if they thought God was the reason they were on the streets - much less in a language I'm not fluent in! Needless to say, I was doing a lot of praying as Kelly and I walked towards downtown, for both courage and safety. We had decided to only approach women, preferably older women if possible. We finally found a group of three people sitting on the sidewalk and nervously approached them. I asked if I could ask the oldest lady of the three some questions, and with the help of her friend we finally were able to have a conversation. She was SO sweet, and eager to talk to us. She hoped that God would someday allow her to get off the streets, but viewed her setbacks as trials, not curses from God. As we left, we gave her and her friend sandwiches. She was SO thankful, and kissed our hands, asking us to come back and visit her again. We made her day, and it felt so rewarding. Kelly and I are hoping to be able to go visit her again this next week, at least once.
The second person we approached was a lady who was probably in her early thirties and sitting with two of her children. We found out that she has three other children and she answered our questions, even though she was much more reserved than our first friend. We gave her a sandwich as we left as well, and as we were walking back to Casa ACU I turned back to see her two children eating the two sandwich halves. That made the whole day worth it.
That morning definitely stretched me, but my only wish is that we had had this class earlier in the year so that we could have done more things like this throughout the entire semester.

In addition to being busy with our Ministry class, those of us who are in the Latin America and the Arts have been frantically trying to finish all of our art papers that are due pretty soon. I have been writing non-stop for the past couple days, and just finished today!! It feels like such a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, it is amazing. After writing five papers in the past day and a half, I don't really know what to do with myself now that I'm done!


...I know there were a lot of things I was planning on writing about, but now I can't remember all of them. We might be going out of town this weekend to Rocha, but we might not. I find out tomorrow, so we'll see. I'm sure I will be remembering some of the things that I've forgotten, so I'll be updating more soon probably.
If not, though... see you guys in two weeks!