Give me a break!!!

I don’t know about you but every time I hear this phrase I can’t help but think of the song from the Kit Kat candy bar commercials “give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.”  Well if it wasn’t in your head before it is now…you’re welcome…haha.  Anyway, I digress Kit Kat bars have nothing to do with this blog post please forgive my momentary rabbit trail.

The break that I am talking about is our first break from language school which is happening this week!!  When we were in missions school the director, Dave Depew, a missionary of over 20 years, repeatedly told us that it’s important to take occasional breaks from language school, every 2 months or so, to let your brain catch up and to avoid burnout.  I remember thinking “oh I don’t know about all that, I don’t want to take breaks, I want to learn as much as I can as fast as I can.”  I learned a valuable lesson in humility these last few weeks as Dylan and I saw the burnout beginning in ourselves and realized a break was needed soon.  Please forgive me for doubting your wisdom Dave. 🙂

We were supposed to have a break from language school the first week of March when we took our outreach trip to complete our missions school curriculum.  This was the outreach trip I talked about in my “Leaving school early and not going to Guatemala” blog post.  Schedule conflicts prevented us from being able to do this in March and it’s looking like we may instead be doing it in August after language school.  We decided to pick this week as our break week since it was right around the 2 month mark (believe it or not we’ve been in school for 9 weeks already) and with this being Holy Week the school is only open for 3 days.  We still would have had to pay for the whole week but only would have had 3 days of learning so we figured this was a good week for a break.

We have many exciting plans for this week.  Tuesday we are climbing the volcano Pacaya which is one of the smaller ones here in Guatemala.  It’s still active so we might be able to make smores or a grilled cheese at the top. Don’t worry about the whole “active volcano” thing we’ll have a guide and they don’t let you climb them if they’re too dangerous.  However, please pray for me to make it to the top of this volcano without passing out.  We practiced the other day by climbing up to the cross here in Antigua.

This is the view looking down over Antigua from the cross! As you can see it’s not a small hill but it’s not a volcano either 🙂

I felt like I was dying then and that was only a 10 minute climb this is a 2 hour climb.  Wednesday we will be traveling to Villa Nueva and will spend the morning picking up some necessities since we’ll be close to some larger stores.  We will be spending Thursday with Jon doing some administrative work and then we get to go visit families with the Serving At Risk Families (SARF) ministry.  After this we will visit a house that is for rent from a woman Jon knows.  From the pictures and description it seems great so we just might have found our future home!!  We will have the blessing of sharing Good Friday with Pastor Jorge and his family

Pastor Jorge (far left) and some of his family!

and at some point that day we will have a meeting to discuss more of what our ministry will look like once we are done language school.  Saturday and Sunday we will be relaxing and enjoying the Easter (or Dia de Resurrección in Spanish) festivities with the kids and our friends at New Life Children’s Home (NLCH).  We are really looking forward to this week of ministry planning, spending time with the families we have come to know and love through the SARF ministry, and spending the holiday weekend with Pastor Jorge’s family and everyone at NLCH.  We also are looking forward to the opportunity to go out into the “real world” and use our Spanish.

It was a little sad as we talked to our parents this weekend and realized this is the first holiday we will miss being with some part of our families in the states.  However, we are so blessed that God has surrounded us with so many wonderful people here who are also family to us.

We hope you all have a great week and enjoy this wonderful Easter holiday with your families, celebrating all that Jesus did for us: His death, burial, and resurrection which offers us a new life forgiven of sin.  God has definitely given us ALL “a break” through this amazing gift, if we will only accept it!!!

Happy Easter/Feliz Dia de Resurrección!!!