The other day we had some sheets washed at the Lavadero (Launderette), and they will deliver them to you once they’ve been washed and dried. When I dropped the sheets off, they took my name - which I said and then spelt for them, but the lady there stopped me before I’d finished. On Wednesday, they delivered them and I had a bit of a chat with the deliverey guy, who was intrigued as to where we were from because of an unusual surname, which I thought nothing of, as it is unusual for Uruguay.

In the last week, we’ve had a few of the children round from the barrio, and it’s quite interesting to see the differences between them and children back home (in general!). The children that we’ve had round love to clean and wash up - which I was surprised at. However we had a bag of packaging foam pieces from a parcel that we’d received and they thought that it was sweets or some other type of food - and asked where to buy them.

At youth group yesterday we had lots of bread rolls left over, so we decided to leave them in the fridge at the CAIF for Sunday to see if there was anyone who needed food. This morning at the service we got through the sermon and Gilberto was just about to start the Eucaristic prayer and realised that they’d run out of wafers! I don’t understand why it was left to that point for him to find out though!

I’ve just finishing reading Exodus in my personal bible studies, and whats really struck me about it is the way that everyone had their own part to play in building the tabernacle, which is particularly clear in Exodus 35. God gave each individual the gifts and materials, so that they could do the work between them. I see this as an old testament copy of 1 Corinthians 12 in many ways, and the church needs to be like this example of the Israelites.

It appears that ‘Darwinists’ are getting worried about evolution not being the only option taught in schools. They’re getting defensive and it appears that they’re realizing that they’ve not got any ground, well other than stubbornness that their view is right! According to Albert Mohler:“When a scientific alternative to evolution is presented, they deny that the theory can be scientific simply because it rejects evolution. Evolutionary theory is now at the core of their definition of science itself.

It’s interesting to see how differently people here react to rain than those in England. Here everything stops when it rains, people stay in their houses and there’s no-one on the streets. A lot of the smaller shops close because of rain as well. So after talking to Gilberto, Youth Group was cancelled yesterday, because there wouldn’t have been anyone there. If everything stopped when it rains in England, the country would come to a standstill!

Today we had a lovely outdoor service in the church garden, because the church has been getting very hot, and last week I commented to Gilberto that it would be nice to have a service outside sometime. By the sounds of things, others had mentioned it too. It was nice, a bit noisy though -but everyone seemed to think it was good so I think we’re having another one on Sunday.

This morning I updated the weather on the [samespirit] front page to be the forecast for Salto rather than Montevideo, which I’ve been thinking about doing for a few days. Interestingly though, the same day - the site I was originally getting the weather forecast from changed the way they do their page so it would have broken my weather script if I hadn’t changed it!

We’ve had quite a busy day today - we had Escuelita this morning and then this evening at 6 we had the first meeting of the new Youth Group! (plus in-between Sylvia came round to plan the youth group with us). For the Escuelita, we looked at Creation, and we’d prepared a 2 sheets in advance - one for the older ones with blank spaces for them to draw something for each of the days of creation and one for the younger ones with pre drawn pictures to colour in.

Had a brilliant bible study in the Barrio today, looking at the 4 different set readings for today. It was really cool - I got a lot from it and felt able to contribute which was good. The readings were Genesis 11:1-9(The tower of Babel), Psalm 37:1-18, Hebrews 6:13-20, John 4:1-42(Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan women). They seemed to link together quite well - the tower of Babel, where the people sought their own achievements ignoring God; the Psalm which told us to trust in God, walk in his paths and listen to him; Hebrews which talked about the certainty of Gods promises; and in John, Jesus saying his food was to do& complete the will of his father.