Rain, rain. Siempre esta lloviendo..

It's true. It has rained every day since we've been here! We get sun in the morning and maybe through lunch time, but then, rain! And lots of it! Apparently it's a tropical storm that's just camping out here for a while, and it's also the end of the rainy season. So I'm very grateful for my umbrella and my rain jacket! And of course, my Chacos! :D

On a more serious note - today was the first day of classes, and I had several interesting experiences. ...

My class schedule turned out to be really complicated, and basically every class I wanted to take conflicted with another one. I was frustrated yesterday, but now, I'm just trying to figure things out the best I can and go from there. Every morning when I wake up, I just started the habit of quoting scripture to myself - and, woah. It's amazing. I don't know why I would ever start my day differently....oh, wait! I'm so selfish - I've always woken up thinking about myself! What I had to do, what I needed or wanted, etc. What a revolutionary idea to begin the day thinking about God's word! It's so humbling to realize how much I make my life about me. God is slowly starting to break me of it, although I know it will always be a struggle. Anyways, classes aren't exactly what I had hoped for, but we'll see what happens!

Today in Spanish class, we had an hour-long conversation about God. It was pretty intense. One of the girls in my class brought it up, and since the last 2 hours of class are conversation anyways, we just ended up talking about what we believed (in Spanish of course) for quite a while! There were a couple agnostics, an atheist, three or four Christians and Catholics, a Lutheran, and a couple who said they didn't really know what they thought about the whole God thing. It was hard because I wanted to express myself more fully than I was able to in Spanish, but still, the conversation was at the very least, thought provoking. At the same time though, I was just in prayer the whole time because honestly, it broke my heart. I realized today how many people there are who don't know the unsurpassed peace of knowing Jesus Christ. It was the most intense religious conversation I've ever participated in, and there was definitely a lot of either apathy or hostility to Christianity. The general feeling was that of, well that's nice that your beliefs work for you, but everyone finds their answers in different places...live in the moment! Seize the day! Of course I agree that we should live life to the fullest, but for a bigger purpose than just today! If that's all there is, what is the point? You guys can be praying for me that God would give me boldness, more opportunities to talk with other students, and also, the words to say! Most of the questions they were asking were way to big for me to answer! But nothing is too big for Him.

~*~

love,

-Courtney

(World Traveler in Training)