What happened to the past week?

It's been a blur. Even though we've had a couple extra days off this week, it hasn't really felt that way. It almost feels as though it's been busier. We've had a couple of play dates with Julieta and Lucas. They were giving each other hugs the other night and this was the best picture I could get. Standards are pretty low when it comes to taking pictures of 2 year olds.We're still not used to the fact that it rains every day here. It sometimes rains 2 or 3 times every day. The other day we needed to go somewhere and had to wing it on keeping the kids dry. This was our solution. Noah was fine with it. E.T. phone home.
On Sunday we had a bowling outreach where we invited students to come bowling. It was a little strange though because we were all spread out so it made it hard to talk to people. I, of course, didn't do well....but I actually didn't bowl. Noah and Lucas took turns bowling as me. Unfortunately they didn't have the bumpers, so there were quite a few gutter balls. But I think they enjoyed it regardless.
Last night, we had our own little fireworks show. Monday evening we had our weekly meeting, so we didn't really have time to do it but last night we had pizza and a pool party as a team for our family fun night, so it was perfect to do it then. The students were all pretty excited. The staff had kept it a surprise that we had fireworks for them. When Clay and I went to buy them, it was pretty fun. They had tons of stuff and Clay was like a kid in a candy store. We got some sparklers and roman candles and then actual legitimate fireworks. I think everyone was pleasantly surprised to be able to experience fireworks in Venezuela.
Leah still isn't walking. She's not at all in a hurry to when she knows she can crawl pretty quickly wherever she needs to go. Her newest thing is climbing on everything. She's figured out that she can climb the chairs, couch and the coffee table. She hasn't mastered getting down yet, but she sure does enjoy just being up on things. One of the guys made a bet with me that she's going to start walking in the 2 weeks after we return home. If that's true, I have to buy an ice cream cake to split with him. If it's after 2 weeks that she starts walking, then he'll split it with us. I'm not sure how either way we end up buying an ice cream cake, but I'm not going to be too disappointed in that purchase!

I'm posting pictures to facebook, so there will be more on there of other things. It's been really fun to see the kids get more and more comfortable here. I think they consider this home now. Noah thinks our apartment is Venezuela, so I've been trying to explain to him that it's the whole place. Ahh, he's 2 so I'm not getting too worked up about it.

It's pretty crazy to see what God has been doing on our project. We've all been stretched in different ways. Some of the staff are having a hard time being here. Some of the students are getting to the point of wanting to go home. Everyone is being faithful in sharing their faith on campus. There hasn't been a ton of sickness in the group, which has been a huge answer to prayer. It's hard to believe that we only have a week and a half left on campus and then next Sunday we leave for debrief.

Will you pray for our group as we slowly begin the transition of going back to the States? Even as we have conversations with students, it's apparent that some people will have a hard time going back. Will you also pray that Venezuelan students that we've had conversations with will stick around and be a part of the movement here? Often it's easy for students to fall through the cracks after the summer project people leave, and we don't want that to happen. We want everyone to get plugged in and we want to build the movement that already exists. Would you please pray for the students who are already involved, that they would grab these other students and take them under their wing?