"Summer Vacation"

This time of year in Panama (and much of Latin America) is vacation time. It is very similar to our summer vacations where the kids are out of school and folks take time off from work. For the next four days, Carnival (a nation-wide Mardi Gras) will commence. Things are really quiet all around and many people are traveling. School starts in March and will last through to December. We plan to start a full load of reading sessions in the next couple weeks at the local University - UDELAS (an acronym for Universidad Especializada de las Americas). The University incorporates LST into the curriculum even though our services are free and we don't work for the University. It's an amazing opportunity to teach college students about the Bible while they take their regular classes. The University provides space for our reading sessions and we live only about a mile away from the campus. God has really set everything up perfectly and we are ready to start.

But we have been taking advantage of the down time though to settle into our new apartment and I am working for the Bible Study Guide for 40 hours a week to make up for time lost during our travel from Brazil and the Christmas holidays. We have been getting used to our new home and surroundings. Plus we are studying Spanish with a tutor 3 nights a week. It is really difficult to learn the language, but we are giving it our best.

Please pray for our upcoming work. We plan to have a very full schedule soon and will be reading through the book of Luke with as many people as we can handle. I have downloaded pictures to our Picasa web page of our recent work in Chepo and of our new apartment. Click here to visit the photo page.