Last Thursday saw us become manual labourers again, although not too intensely. That day our task was to machete (and dig and shear) the plants around the grounds. Not too hard a task except that there are a lot of grounds and the temperature was high. I had fun pretending my machete was a sword and I was in some sort of epic battle (hey you have to find joy your work somehow right?) and as part of it demolished a huge fallen branch into many smaller pieces. A few of us took a break at one point and climbed the water tower.
Friday was our day off for the week and we drove to the nearby crater lake at Masaya, enjoying the naturally warmed water with the other team that is based near to us this month. We also visited the local tourist market and I managed to buy a hammock for less than £3! (when i bought some rope and hooks in town they came to around £2 – less than a fiver for a whole hammock set up – yeah!
Saturday was a day of interacting with the community. As usual we went around the local barrios (neighbourhood) reminding people about the bible studies that day and church the next, and then prepared for said things afterwards. In the afternoon there was a women's bible study and a youth group meeting and then after those there was a "soccer" game (*americans…* :-p) between some of the local kids and the other team that had been visiting this past week.
Then today has been church services – one this morning at Nueva Vida where we live, and then there will be one this afternoon at Casa Mateo, the central location for all of the associated ministries. We have been learning some new spanish songs so I have about fifteen I know now so we have been using several of the newer (to us) ones today.
