I thought I'd fill you in on what I did last weekend to give you a little taste of my every day life here in Shell. My weekend started out with our usual "young people" a.k.a. "singles" a.k.a. "people without families" get-together. (It's called a lot of things, because most people don't like being labeled as single!) Anyway, I started hosting dinners my first year here in Shell for the other young/single missionaries. But, it had died off recently due to the lack of other single missionaries. So, we've decided to start it back up again. It's always fun to get together after the work week and just relax. And of course, it's always even more fun when food is involved! Sometimes people bring the random instruments they play and we sing praise and worship songs together. It's always a good time!

On Saturday, I went to Ambato, a city about 2 1/2 hours from Shell, with David and a group of my girlfriends. Probably the reason that missionaries from Shell go to Ambato about 95% of the time is for the shopping! Ambato has an actual MALL with a GROCERY STORE! It's pretty exciting. :-) Here in Shell, we buy our "groceries" at one store, our fruits and veggies at a market, and our meats from a butcher. So, as you can imagine, going to an actual grocery store, similar to a Super Wal-Mart, is pretty exciting for us. And every time I go, I get super-excited about the littlest things. Last time I went I found spicy brown mustard and couldn't wait to get home and eat some on a ham sandwich! Of course, I had to buy the sliced ham in Ambato, too, but it all worked out.

Sunday was "Dia de Mujer" - Day of the Woman. How can you not love a country that celebrates women?!?! Young or old, single or married, every female in Ecuador gets an entire day to celebrate the fact that she was born a female! Random people give you roses on the street, everyone tells you "Happy Day", and churches have special programs to celebrate the female gender. Our church had special music, a drama, and a time of prayer for all of the women as we went up in front of the church. And before we left, they gave us each a rose and a piece of chocolate. Boy, do they know how to treat women or what?!?! :-) They also had cake after the service. It was pretty awesome!

My friend, Melissa, got baptized on Sunday, so that was pretty awesome, too! Melissa works as a teacher at the orphanage in Shell, Casa de Fe. (Click here to read more about the amazing ministry at Casa de Fe!) She was baptized as a baby and has recently felt convicted to get baptized again when she actually understands what it symbolizes. She decided to invite a few friends and children from the orphanage to be a part of her baptism in the river near the construction site for the new orphanage. And Melissa asked David to perform the baptism. It was really exciting to see him in that role and I was even able to translate David's mini-sermon before he baptized her. (Some people present weren't fluent in Spanish, including Melissa.) After the baptism, some of the older children from the orphanage started asking questions about baptism, so David is going to go on Saturday to talk to them some more about baptism and explain it in more detail. Wouldn't it be awesome if some of the children followed God's command from watching the example of Melissa?

And although this might not sound like a very exciting thing for you, it was for me. I FINALLY caught a rat that had been in my house for over a week. I was so excited to hear the trap go off! :-) And even more excited to get that rat out of my house. Although I'm not so sure it can compete with buying groceries from a "real" grocery store, getting roses and chocolate, and seeing my friend get baptized.