Great fun, great sights, and great friends!

Buenas, todos!

Warning: Long post. Also lots of pictures!

(This is a picture of Dayanis, our friend Mary, Shelly and me at dinner the other night.)

So here it is, the end of the first week of teaching, and let me tell you....I am loving it.

It's so much fun being able to help people learn English. I'm getting the hang of things, and we've figured out how to live on "Panamanian time".

Each class is at a different level of speaking, so we've figured out how to change the lessons we have for each group. I was so nervous at first, thinking that I wouldn't be able to explain things well enough or I wouldn't be able to be engaging enough.

Well, the truth is, it's absolutely not me. It's all God, because I'm not a teacher! I'm not qualified to be doing what I'm doing. But I keep thinking of that quote "God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called."

That's exactly what's happened! God chose me (the most unequipped teacher in my opinion) and is using me to spread His Word through English class!

So Monday through Thursday were full of classes. Monday and Wednesday we have a big break from about 10-3, and Shelly and I are loving the coffee and siesta time.

Thursday evening we decided to go explore Santiago. The main street through town is about a 10 minute walk from Dayanis and Wide's house, so we walked around enjoying the evening.

We thought it would be nice outside because it had started to rain, but Wide told us that because it only rained a little bit, it would actually be hotter out at night.

But, away we went, hoping it would rain more while we were walking.....it didn't, but it was still nice to get out and explore.

There are a bunch of clothing shops, mini malls and fondas which are little hole in the wall restaurants on the main street. There is also a gorgeous Catholic Church at the end of the street.

Panama is a Catholic country, and I've also seen some Church of Christ and Apostolic churches around. Cristobal has planted Baptist churches in Santiago and Cañazas, and he goes up in the mountains and preaches in the villages there. It's amazing.

We went back to Central Avenue on Saturday after class because when we went on Thursday everything was closed. So we went back to look around in the shops (after a siesta of course).

We went to this busy panadaria or bread shop and got some pastries and coffee. It was great. Until we got chased by bees.

We looked around some more, then decided we needed some water. So on the way back, we stopped at a mini mart and met a really sweet family.

The man in line in front of us was with his two granddaughters, who were the daughters of the lady at the checkout. He only came up to my shoulder, so he told his granddaughters to look and he measured himself next to me.

I had some pears in my hand, so I told them Shelly and I were so tall because we ate our fruits and vegetables. He kept telling the girls to listen to me and that they could be as tall as we are if they would eat right.

We actually ran into them again today in a store while Dayanis and Wide were looking around, and they wanted to take a picture with us! He told us that he was going to bring his granddaughters to the school to visit us. So we might have three new students this week!

Today brought another great day in God's house. The service and songs are obviously completely in Spanish, so sometimes it's hard to keep up with all that Cristobal is saying, but the Word of God is still His Word no matter what language, and I was blessed in spite of that.

But I just got ahead of myself.

Back up to Friday.

Friday was our free day, so Cristobal and Eneida took us to the Panama Canal and we walked around Casco Viejo, which is this really cool old part of Panama City.

We woke up bright and early to get an early start to the canal since it's 4 hours away from Santiago. Roadtrip!

Cristobal told us to be ready to go at 6am Panamanian time, so we were ready to go at 6:30, and we enjoyed coffee on the patio until they came to pick us up at 7.

As you can see, we were doing some wishful thinking that morning having our hair down....yeah that didn't last.

I told Shelly that we wouldn't recognize each other in the States with our hair and makeup done.

So off we went at 7 and stopped about 30 minutes into the drive for a coffee break. I'm telling you, I could probably live here simply for the coffee.

We drove and drove and drove and finally saw the ocean. Cristobal took us to this area where we could go touch the water before we actually went to the canal.

These are some ships waiting to go through the canal. Every ship that passes through has to wait 8 hours. And we learned that around 45 ships go through the canal every day. 

Also, we were near the airport so a plane flew right over us and it was awesome.

Friday funday selfie! 

Not the best picture, but this is the bridge that was built when the US was in charge of the canal. It is right over it, and we drove over it to get to the canal museum.

So the canal has a visitors center/museum that we went and toured, and it explained anything and everything about the canal and it's history. It was really cool. On the top floor, you could go out and watch a ship go through the canal.

Sadly, no ships passed through while we were there, but it was still really fun.

After the canal, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed on to Casco Viejo.

I really enjoyed walking around in that part of the city! The buildings were beautiful, and Shelly, being an art teacher, really enjoyed all of the art in the area.

Oh. Disclaimer: A lot of these pictures are Shelly's. 

And here are some of the other buildings in Casco Viejo.

That was all on Friday. Saturday like I said before, we had class and then walked around Santiago.

And today was church.

And Satan was ready and waiting to attack us. We had a fantastic week, a wonderful church service, and instead of being happy and rejoicing for the great day, we decided to complain about being hungry and hot.

We really got ourselves into a self-pitying mood. Instead of being happy to be where God wants us, we wanted to find little things to complain about.

So. Tonight Shelly and I had a Jesus talk. We read some verses and talked about how ridiculous it is for us to be complaining about anything when we have been saved. There's no greater thing in the world than that!

This whole trip has me seeing myself and my Lord in a whole new light. I know that's one reason God wanted me to come do this; so that my faith would be stretched and tested.

I definitely haven't trusted Him on several occasions this trip, especially in the first few days like I talked about earlier. But that's the thing about God's grace. No matter how many times we fail (complaining today was absolutely a fail), He is waiting with open arms.

We talked about how awesome God is for knowing that we would need each other here at the same time, for the amount of time we would be here.

Shelly is leaving on Thursday, which was at first completely terrifying to me. I have to teach class alone for an entire week!

But this wasn't a surprise to God at all! He knows what I can handle, and how He wants to use me.

God is so good.