Jesus was playing football!!

I love love love weekends!! Yeah, I love my work, but weekends are different. Saturday mornings are me-only mornings - time to sleep, relax etc. Then youth group, friends etc in the evening. I only ever speak Spanish at weekends as most of my friends don't speak English. It still doesn't feel like my life sometimes - but someone elses!



Sundays? My favourite day of the week. I LOVE it!



At church today it was the last of the celebration services for the churches 21st anniversary. Followed by a picnic - well Carne Asada. The church provided the meat and tortillas and families had to bring their own chismol, avacados etc. Not being a family and having all this food, different families adopt me and bring extra food for me! Sweet huh? I sat and looked around me at one point during the picnic and realised every single person in the church knows me - I am truly accepted! If you remember, back in November the Pastor asked me to make a Prayer Calender with photos of every single family and person in the church, and I also had to make a Directory - details like addresses, jobs, phone numbers, DOB etc. It was v hard work and nearly killed me, but it was so worth it. I took photos of about 200 people and so got to meet each and every person in church and talk to them, take their photo. Some Couldn't make it to church and I went to their houses to take their photos etc - so I got to see where people live. I don't remember the name of everyone - mainly the old people who don't come every week. But everyone knows me! As I sat and looked around today it was very apparent. I am a part of the community in every way.



Anyway, after church, I went and drank coffee at a friends house and then it was football time. Every Sunday for 2 years now I have been and watched the boys play football. Our church is the only church team in the secular, town league. We're doing quite well this year. I love Sundays! All the other teams now recognise me too, which makes it easier being the only girl -and only white there! They are my Sunday family. And all my friends from church play in the team (well most of them!), todays game was going quite well and then at half time this man playing for the other team turned up...and looked exactly like Jesus!! It was hilarious. He went and played and they scored a goal - which I pointed out was because they had Jesus on their team! Sadly...it very quickly became obvious that 'Jesus' perhaps wasn't quite like the real Jesus after all 'cos he was blind drunk. Made amusing viewing!! He only got to play for 5 minutes before, after long discussions, they managed to convince him to get off the campo!! They had a whole load of fans....turned out they were all drunk too!! When 'Jesus'' friend came up to me with whisky bottle in hand and took my hand declaring we were friends, I just said no we weren't and went and stood in the middle of all my friends (men!). He was a scary man!! Never a dull moment.



As I write this David (Kulicha - Lorena and Jaime's younger brother) is lying on my sofa watching some random Mexican TV show whilst his laundry is washing in my machine. 'Lavandoria Gringa' is very busy at the weekends. Notice it's only the guys who come to wash their clothes in the machine! But it's my way of serving them and sharing what I have.



I can't tell you how much I love weekends and time with my friends, with my church, time to relax. Each weekend that passes it becomes more evident that I am a part of this community, this church, my friends. I need to work more on my Spanish - not a word of English on Sundays for sure! I still can't believe that is me!!

I really am very lucky to be living here. I hope tonight is going to be calm and uneventful. Work tomorrow....but it will soon will be Saturday again!!