Panama is awesome

So the beauty of a blog is that I can write whatever I want and people who are interested can read it and people who just don’t care don’t have to. It’s rather a lovely concept.
So I came to Costa Rica to learn Spanish, more about the Bible and just generally prepare myself for becoming a missionary in Peru. I had no intentions of falling in love with Costa Rica. And I was right. I don’t love Costa Rica the way I love Peru. I love many people here and I am building special relationships with people here, with both Costa Ricans (Ticos) and members of my team and I will be sad to leave, but Costa Rica hasn’t gripped my heart the way Peru has. This place will always be a nice place to come back and visit, but not much more than that.
However, I have spent the last week in Panama. I love Panama. I spent 7 days there (two of which were actually travel days), and put simply; I adored it. The landscape is break taking, the people are sweet, and Colonial part of town is charming, Panama City is modern and bustling, and the country is seeped with history. I know I am going to return to Panama at some point in my life. Almost my entire team wants to have our reunions in Panama and several want to live there for a time. It really made an impact on us. It is hard to exactly state why Panama struck a chord in so many of us in such a short time. But why does any place leave an impact on one’s life?
We arrived at the Word of Life camp around 7 last Wednesday. We had been driving since 11:30 the night before and needless to say, we were all quite fanatic about getting off the bus. We spent the few days we had at the camp interacting with the campers and staff and helping out anywhere we were needed, which usually ended up being in the kitchen. I think I have chopped and peeled enough carrots and potatoes to last me the rest of my life. J Several of us also put on the Lifehouse drama. I am hoping that someone will upload the skit to facebook so I can post a link on here. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a silent skit done to the Lifehouse song, Everything. It starts out with Jesus and a girl dancing, then different snares come along and pull her away from Jesus, such as a boy, money, drinking, etc. At the end, she fights to get back to Jesus, and then Jesus comes between here and all the sins and saves her. It is a really powerful drama.
The campers left Saturday morning, which gave us a wonderful day to relax and just enjoy each other’s company. Sunday we took a trip down to the Panama Canal and Panama City. The historic part is right next to the ocean is so beautiful. At times I felt as if I were in Italy or some small town in Europe. We also took a trip into the modern part of the city and went to the largest mall I have ever seen in my entire life. It had three food courts (one of which has a light show every hour), a bowling alley, a movie theater, and hundreds of stores. It was also a favorite because it was cheap. Panama is significantly cheaper than Costa Rica. J
Monday had us at the beach for the day, then we packed up and arrived back home at the Villa around 2 yesterday afternoon. It took us about 16 hours to travel and our air conditioning on the bus broke. I’m not complaining, but it was pretty darn uncomfortable in 80-90 degree weather. And the most sleep I got Monday night was 2 hours at the border at 4 am where I spread out on the floor while we waited for the boarder to open.
We didn’t have classes today to give us a chance to recover, which was fantastic. Tonight we are going to meet some pro-football players who came down to do a camp. That should be nice.
Jumping back a bit, last week we had our children’s carnival in Los Guidos. It was very chaotic, but it turned out great. We had about 200 kids there. The kids had a lot of fun and it gave us a great opportunity to share the gospel with them!
I would love to hear how you are all doing. Send me an e-mail at redroses2@frontiernet.net.