Our first team arrived this afternoon. We played Euchre for two hours while waiting for them to come. God is good! We ate dinner with them, went through the rules and regulations (all the boring stuff), and then headed back so I could blog you guys! No, not really. For this coming week, Steve (our team leader) will be leading the team, and we will be job shadowing. All six of us. It ought to be quite the learning experience. Next week they're kicking us out on our own in groups of two. So, we're in for a busy week this week and another one coming up! We appreciate your prayers.
One quick story to illustrate how hard we're working out here . . . So, yesterday afternoon, we (Steve, Liza, Marcio, Jenny, Josh, Mark, and me) headed out for the beach. Pale blue water, mountains in the background, sandy ocean floor. It was beautiful. We stepped in the water (much against my better judgment, what with the sharks and all) and waded out until we were stopped by a very wide, very scary shallow line of sea urchins and various other precursors to a coral reef. We decided to be brave. Conquer our fears, risk death and almost certain painful torture, and cross the bed of sea urchins to take a look at the coral reef. Which was going to have to be pretty darn cool to be worth the effort. The only problem, as I have been informed: Sea urchins sting. The water was somewhere in depth between your knee and your thigh, depending on the rock formations and what not. And Jenny and I didn't have any shoes on. So, Marcio heroically volunteered to drag us across on our backs. (He was wearing shoes.) So, we laid on our backs, threw our heads back, did our best to relax (what with razor-sharp little menaces mere inches from our bare backs), and took Marcio's hands as he pulled us over the sea urchins, the random jellyfish, starfish, and other things I was trying really hard not to think about.
It was a beautiful picture. There we were, inches from certain death. But as long as we held perfectly still and kept tight hold (and I do mean tight) of Marcio's hands, we were good to go. Nothing could hurt us. That's what we want to do these coming weeks with the hand of God. We know He's got a hold of us, and we want to relax, lean back, and trust Him to lead. And He will give us life.
So, back to the sea urchins: We made it across, glanced at the coral reef (which I'm sure deserved a lot more respect than we gave it), got stung by a few sea urchins when a couple of us fell over (nothing serious, but we were proud of our war wounds), and hightailed it back to the safety of land. Heads back, perfectly still, and holding desperately to Marcio's hands.
(P.S. If you'd like to see a picture of our team, go to facebook. Sorry I'm not actually in the picture. I was holding the camera. Of course. :-) This is my team. From left to right: Mark, Josh, Marcio, Liza, and Jenny. Steve was taking a nap on the shore.)
