Yay! I just finished my book Blue Like Jazz and am pretty excited about it. It was pretty good but I started The Shack today and so far I'm really into it! Honestly the last few weeks I have read more than I ever read at home so I think I'm turning into a bookworm. Our team is required to go through eight books during our first three months here. We are in our first one and I'm actually really not liking it. I think its important though to read things sometimes even when you don't necessarily agree with it so you are aware of what other people believe and you can form better opinions yourself about why you agree with it or not. The book is Victory Over Darkness and I'm hoping it will start to get better. We have had a pretty good week. Some people have been getting a little sick from trying to get used to the tap water here but we have been able to do a good bit of ministry this week. I really love how we are spending our days here right now. In January we are going to be doing so much more outreach ministry but right now I am just enjoying soaking up everything we are learning like a sponge. Right now we have about a three hour class in the morning discussing the book we are reading and really dissecting certain verses in order to get the fullest meaning possible. I love it because sometimes reading the Bible it is easy to read big passages and never really spend time trying to understand what it is saying. After that time we spend the next four hours doing scheduled ministry in the community and it has also been great to get going with that this week. We did an ATL this week and it was really cool how God worked through my group of three people. When we started off we prayed for God to give us direction on where we needed to go. All I could see in my mind that whole time was Central Park which is a place here where people try to sell many things. I asked my team if we could go there and then God led another person on my team to pray with a mother and baby sitting on a bench. The mother told us how sick the baby was and how the doctors kept sending her to the witch doctors. The mother told us nothing was working and wanted us to pray for the baby so we did and that's all I know. I really hope us taking time with her had an impact to her and the baby in some way. We haven't been very busy this week because we are still trying to get into things here. We spent a lot of time this week at El Puente working with the guys that live there. The first day we cut a ton of vines and tall grass down with machetes. It was different especially when your used to a lawn mower and weed eater but we really got a lot done and now El Puente is starting to look awesome. Our soccer games at night with the kids who live on our street are still going strong and we are forming some good relationships with some of them. I have completely fallen in love with this food called picos here. They are so good and I'm not sure what I'll do when I get back to Georgia. Its like a sugar and cheese type pastry and its great! I love the freedom of time that I have had this week to spend with God. At home and in my routine it is easy to push it to bottom priority but this week has been so cool just chilling with God at random parts of the day if that makes sense. It was pretty funny yesterday how Heather (one of the ladies working with our team) was talking about how she had this cynical outlook at one point in her life about this shirt that said "I am a princess because my father is the King of Kings". A few minutes later I told her how I have that shirt from a Winterfest conference and I loved it. We both busted out laughing because it was kind of ironic. So I wore it the next day just for her but the point to all that is that its easy to forget I'm able to be so close to him and at the moment I really needed to hear those words it was like the Holy Spirit reminded me that I am his princess and beautiful to him. I just about started crying in front of everybody but just having that truth in my heart that day made the all the difference in how my day went! I'm missing home in a big way right now but am having a blast serving God at the same time so its all good!

Hope everyone is having a blessed week!!!

Love,

Jenn