Escuadron

I took my first real test in my elective class today. It was bad.... we all knew it would be. Our teacher is really great though, he is very kind and I can tell that he loves teaching. He had to go to the states last week to give lectures, and his first stop was in New Orleans. He sent us an e-mail shortly after saying that New Orleans is becoming his favorite city in the US. He said that he loves the people in America, and wished that other Latin Americans and Hugo Chaves knew that (?). He said that we are like a big elephant walking on a glass table and no matter how lightly we walk on it, we will most likely break it. He even brought is candy to snack on during the test. That is one thing I really appreciate about Veritas, all of my teachers are EXCELLENT and I can tell that they just really enjoy teaching! 


Do not worry about the test though, it was 25% of our final grade, and he gave us 15% extra credit for our game the other day and bringing in note books for some underprivileged kids in his organization. We learned that it is actually 15%, so all you had to get on the test was 10 points right and you would get an A!! That is a bit silly, but I will still take it!! 


Tonight, a couple of us met at the highway and walked over to the soccer field. One of Ben's friends form his soccer team invited us to go to a worship service with him. It was called Escuadron and it was a bit like Awanas or something. There were kids from the ages of 10-25 there. We split up into separate groups and had to memorize a little saying. Por la Gracia de Dios, nos mantemos brillando y luchando por Jesus Cristo. Porque Quieremos sirvielos, porque los amamos, hasta que llegamos en su prescencia en el cielo. Something like that, It says By the grace of God, we will keep shining and fighting for Jesus Christ. Because we want to serve others, we love others, until we arrive in his presence in the heavens.


It is a pretty great saying and I did get a check by my name for memorizing it!!!!


We played games for about an hour. The first one was a scavenger hunt, and each team had a runner to bring the objects to the front table. Of course my team picked me. One time the speaker asked for a piercing. My team kept pointing to my nose, but I did not want to take it out. So I just put my head on the table, and we got the point. In CR, the young people ALL have piercing. It was so funny because you just saw people messing with their faces then handing everyone their piercing... probably not to sanitary but quite funny.


One called for the ugliest face. This guy in my group told me to bring him up. He showed me his "ugly" face, caro feo, but it was not that ugly. I heard Joey and Hope yelling at me to do my crazy eye. I embraced my gringaness and showed the guy on my team. He died laughing then proceeded to tell the speaker to watch me, which he did. Not everyone could see it though, so they told me to do it one more time.... There was literally a wall of about 50 Ticos looking at me while I did it, someone even had their recorder out. Oh yes, there was laughter. What a night.


After that, 2 boys sang worships songs with recordings. I can not describe how cool it is to sing worship in another language. I knew a couple of the songs, but the majority I did not. It is going to fast so you do not really have time to translate it to English, so I really feel like I am singing in Spanish because I can understand it. It just gives the words a different meaning. I just felt thankful in that time. Thankful that I had the opportunity to learn Spanish, to come to Costa Rica, to meet all of my friends here, to be at that service, to be singing to Dios en Spanish... EVERYTHING!


After that there was a short lesson. I will not lie, I did not get much out of it. There was a backlight on him, so we could not see his mouth moving, which is pretty vital for me to understand. He also was speaking on a microphone and there was an echo because we were in a gym. Needless to say though, I still got a lot out of the night!!! Gracias a Dios!