Dave and Cam's Peru Adventure

Hola! I hope you all are doing well. We are doing good here- we've survived our second week:) This week has been a little different. School was much harder as I got into the intricacies of ser and estar and por and para and saber and conosco and irregular preterit verbs. Whew- it makes me tired just writing it! But conversation is getting better and a little easier and thats good. I figured out that I had over 400 vocab words as of Tuesday. No I don't have them all memorized yet. Keep praying! On Sunday we went to a Baptist church near Antigua and are going today to minister with them in a mission project they are involved in. More on that later. We've stayed in San Juan more this week in the afternoons and that has been helpful. Candy, Mandy and I have also been putting on our backpacks full of stuff and hiking some of the steep streets here a couple of times a week for practice for the Andes. The locals really think we are crazy now. Our family continues to bless us with their kindness and generosity. The food is still amazing- one morning this week we had homemade banana crepes with marmalade in them and a side of fresh pineapple. You have no idea. Please pray for them that the veil of catholicism will be lifted and they will see who Christ really is. We love them very much and hope to be able to speak to them better soon! Pray for our teachers as well. They are used to teaching missionaries and they either know what to say or how to keep the conversation from going there. Though just in regular conversation I've been able to share some things with my teacher. Its not hard to love the people here very quickly. They are sweet in nature, quick to laugh, and always ready to eat something! We are hoping to plan a trip to the beach next weekend b/c Guat.'s labor day is Friday and we don't have class- so we get a long weekend.
Please continue to pray for our group here as we strive to be united, find where God wants us to minister, and work hard to learn the language. Pray also for health for the group- David and I have been fine but some others have had a few stomach issues and a sprained ankle has made their week more tough.
An interesting note: Here in San Juan there is a bombas factory (fireworks mostly, though not with the pretty lights, just the loud loud loud noise) and they are very popular to set off for a fiesta or someones birthday or if I understand correctly, if anything remotely exciting happens at all. We've heard them quite a bit and they are extraordinarily loud. But we've kinda gotten used to them. Yet this morning (friday) I was having my typical nightly bad dream about a war of some kind- when I was awakened to the loud sound of what I could only imagine was machine gun fire. David, being the protective caring, wonderful husband he is, threw himself over me and covered my head. My heart is pounding like crazy and I'm thinking we need to get under the bed!!! But its not big enough- so I'm laying there trying to think if we could turn the table over and get behind it- when at last we realize it was just someone celebrating a birthday with an enormous string of bombas_ AT 4:45 IN THE MORNING. Now I'm not a Guatemalan- so I know I don't really understand, but who in their right mind celebrates ANYTHING at 4:45 in the morning? Well they do in San Juan. With that note- I'll write more next week.