An Adventure of Sorts

This afternoon I had a bit of an adventure. After church this morning, (I’ll go off on a short tangent about church first). Church here is quite different from what I’m used too, but also different from what I’ve experienced in other Latin American churches. It starts off normal, with singing, scripture reading, etc. Once we reached the time for a sermon however, it changed. Rather than the preacher give a sermon to the entire congregation, we were divided up in age groups (adults, youth, kids) and each had our own lesson and discussion. I actually quite liked this, because it allowed the lessons to be specifically directed a each individual age group, and allowed for discussion among the groups.
Now back to my story. This afternoon I went out with a bunch of friends to a local rec center. They have basketball and volleyball courts, soccer and baseball fields, etc. After walking partway down the mountain we live in, and down some side roads, this took about an hour, we arrived at the rec center. We played basketball and volleyball, which was quite fun. Next we wanted to play soccer, but the soccer fields were closed, so we decided to walk to nearby Nicaragua Christian Academy, hoping to play soccer there. We arrived there, after another 35 minutes walking, to find that it was closed. Unable to play soccer, we started our journey home, about 5 km by now after walking away from home, then partway back but on a slightly different route.
At one point on our way home I experienced something new: drinking Coke out of a plastic bag. We had gotten thirsty, so we bought at 3 Liter bottle of Coke. Not having cups, we improvised with plastic bags. It’s actually pretty cool. You pour the pop into the bag, tie the bag, then bite a hole in the corner of the bag and drink from it. Next time I can’t find any cups, I hope I remember this, it really is pretty cool!
We continued back up the mountain, though on a different road than usual. At one point we decided to cut through on a shortcut. This lead us first down a dirt two track through the jungle, then across some fields where beans and corn are grown. At the end, we had to cut through some jungle, off the beaten path. This was quite interesting, and a challenge for me. At various points we had to squeeze through spaces between trees or under branches that were quite small. We joked that this path was made for Nicaraguans (it was a Nica-path) not Americans, because I had trouble fitting through some of the spaces. After trudging through the jungle for awhile, we half slid, half jumped down a hill, squeezed through some more trees, climbed up a bank, and arrived back at Monte Hermon. We were home after our adventure through the jungle.
The real adventure parts of the day were drinking Coca-Cola from a bag, and trudging through the jungle. All in all we were out for about 5 hours, just hanging out, having fun, joking around, and enjoying life.

Las promesas del Señor son puras ¡son come la plata más pura, refinada en el horno siete veces! Tú, Señor, nos cuidarás; ¡siempre nos pretegerás de tales gentes!
-Salmos 12:6-7