"Mi nombre es Otoño"

This was the weekend I started to use my Spanish name, Otoño (which is just like saying "autumn" the season), becuase it was just much easier for the Columbians to pronounce. But I was also labeled "la mona" meaning "the blonde". I think alot of the kids especially had never seen a person that looked like me, becuase there were many kids who kept asking me if my blue eyes were real. I just said "Si, es naturale".

The transportation here is quite the adventure as the streets in Bogota have thousands of tiny little yellow taxis buzzing around. A two lane road actually has the room for three+ lanes I have observed, as I watched even the buses pass around other buses going uphill on a double lined street.. I usually don't look out the window ahead but just turn to the side window and enjoy the scenery! Oh well it just adds to the fun. The bus ride we took this weekend was some of the best countryside I have ever seen, driving south from Bogota through the Andes for 3 hours.. I was really happy when we had to get pulled over at a checkpoint to get out and view all the little cities and farms down in the valleys.

When we got to Villavencio the first night Suzan, Judith and I had a slumber party with a family of 5 girls who are apart of Pastora Clemencia's church. We hung out for a while talking in SIMPLE Spanish, and for hours we just laughed and they tried to teach us salsa dancing in our pajamas in their little two bedroom house. After a while it was so neat when it finally hit me, wow, we don't even really know how to communicate at all but it was still the best time.

The crusades with Charlie Elliot and his crew were really great. There were so many people we prayed with for healing, and for it was my first experience with personally praying for a woman who had a deaf ear and she could hear afterwords! There is a man in the church named Hermando who drives a taxi and whenever he picks up someone and they want to go to the witchdoctor because they are sick, he tells them about the people at Clemencia's church who pray for people in the name of Jesus for healing. Plus, he tells them, its free. This happened one of the mornings we were there, an older couple came because they were sick, and the man had a hernia in his stomach that I commanded to go away and I felt it just go from rock hard to just like jelly.

But along with all of the physical miracles, the ones you could see, I was probably the most touched when I could really feel the compassion of Christ rise up within me for a person's heart. I think my favorite time was when we were out in the neighborhoods (talking with people, praying for them, and inviting them to the crusade), we met an old man that was sitting out in front of his house in a chair with a ton of medical tubes coming out from his belly. The Lord reminded me of the story of Zaccheus, about how when Jesus said "Come down out of the tree, for I am coming to your house today". When I told him that, that Jesus had just came to this house, he started to well up with tears and cry. And good grief at that point I felt the Love of God so strong then I couldnt hold it together either! We stayed and talked with him for a while, praying with him and encouraging him.

One of my new favorites is jugo de maracuya (passion fruit juice)which only costs about 1 dollar for a tall glass. I had never even had passion fruit before, much less in a drink. It was introduced to me by Charile's interpreter, a Columbian named Laura (shown in the picture holding the passion fruit). It was great to hang out with her as she was one of the few new people I met here that I can actually communicate with! The Columbian ice cream shoppes put Baskin Robbins' 31 flavors to shame, becuase they make these huge fruit and ice cream dishes that even have cheese on them.
And my new buzzword is "chevere" which is Spanish for "cool". But everytime I try to pronounce it it comes out "Chevrolet". Well its just easier that way, and plus they know I am an American. I really enjoyed staying down in Villavacencio, it was quite the eye opener as it puts any American poverty I've seen look like luxury. But the people I met are so great to be around and we had so much fun the whole time. This week at night we are teaching D.E. to a group on the other side of Bogota. I will update more later on this week!