Sing with Joy to the Lord

What a great Saturday! In the afternoon, Wimon, Rosalinda, several of the students and I went to a fair called "Hecho Aca," or "Made Here." It wasn't so much an open market as a higher end crafts fair. It was all in doors and we had to pay an enterance fee. It was really neat to see the stuff they had. The Uruguayans are really proud to displays all their wares made here. It was mostly artwork, jewelry, knicknacks for around the house... you know craft fair stuff. It was more on the edge of town so we took a bus. We knew the bus we took was going to the neighborhood we wanted, but we didn't know that it was one that took a more indirect route. We ended up seeing some of the poorest neighborhoods in Montevideo, which was an intersting contrast to Hecho Aca, as almost everyone there was probably upper middle class. I was tired and came back sooner than the others. My bus ride home took probably a third of the time that the ride there took, but it wasn't as interesting.

When Wimon and Rosalinda came home, they brought Chinese food for dinner for the three of us. It is such a blessing to be here with them. I've been friends with them for several years and always respected and admired them. But I have loved getting a chance to spend so much time with them. We have a good time hanging out and even discussing business... which believe or not does happen sometimes... I promise we do work. And really, they work A LOT... I don't know how they keep up the pace. As we were finishing up dinner, we got a great surprise. Raquel, our normal cook who has been on vacation, and her husband Luis stopped by to say, "Hi!" They had only been back a few hours. It was great to see them. I feel like saying that Raquel is our cook is the understatement of the year. She is one of the great parts of living in Uruguay. We are really excited to see her.

After Raquel left, we finished up dinner then heard this beatiful sound from the courtyard. Our students were singing. They just had spontaneously started singing then went after songbooks. Well if you know the Walkers and I well, you know that singing is something we can't resist. Not everyone was out the whole time, but probably over the course of a couple hours of singing almost everyone in the house was out at one time or the other. We sang old and new favorites from both an OLD "Great Songs of the Church" and from the latest addition of the Minter Lane Hymnal. What a blessing! Rosalinda assured them that we could do this everynight and it would be ok with us. We finally quit around 11 in respect to our neighbors. :)

Have I mentioned that this group ROCKS??? I am so blessed to have been able to come to two times to South America with two great groups of students.