Rappelling and Walking on Water

After spending a week cramming our brains with verb conjugations, proper usage of prepositions, sentence structure, and translation of GE curriculum, Saturday was a wonderful day off!  Nathan pulled out his rappelling gear, and we all headed a short way out of San Cristobal to a beautiful spot in the mountains with an awesome rock bridge from which we could rappel.After a short lesson on how the whole process works, we headed down one by one.  Steven was the first to go, taking the 100-foot drop like a pro.  Then Adrian, Ruth, Elizabeth, and Daniel went next.  Finally, it was my (Amy's) turn.  Having never rappelled before, and being rather afraid of heights, I was determined to conquer my fear and take the challenge.  Nathan gave me a short pep talk as I made my start, and slowly but surely I made my way off the edge until finally I was just swinging in the air... way, way, way higher than I have ever been before! :-p  It was both exhilarating and terrifying all at once.Upon a successful arrival at the bottom, I decided to try something else new - walking on water!  Still a bit dizzy and hyperventilating from my exciting experience, I headed back across the stream to climb back to the top.  Unfortunately, I completely missed seeing the rock path across the stream, and saw what I thought was a sandbar instead.  Much to my surprise, my "sandbar" turned out to be a bunch of gunk floating on top of the river.  And, just in case you're wondering, even though I can now rappel, I still can't walk on water! :-)  (And talk about cold...)After a tasty picnic lunch, it began to rain, so we all headed home to play games, bake cookies, and fellowship for the rest of the day (and get one of us a hot shower! :-)).  Wow, talk about one awesome day!We're really enjoying our time here, and learning so much.  Today at church, all of us noticed a significant improvement in our Spanish skills, either in our understanding of the sermon, or abilities to communicate with those we met.  Tomorrow we start our second week of school.  Time flies!  The translation of the GE curriculum is coming along slowly, but we're all excited about the long-term effectiveness of the project.  This week we'll start videotaping the skits so that we can have a complete curriculum package for use by churches and individuals even beyond the places GE team get to visit.Pray for us as we start our second week here.  We really need those "velcro brains"!Amy, for the language team