October 17th

Hey Everyone! I will be doing or trying to do weekly updates about what all I'm doing here. This past weekend was spent working on the apartment that was just rented out for the girls (Emily and Maylis). It was not very well taken care of and we are redoing just about everything, such as paint, electrical, plumbing and appliances. That will be done soon and is coming along fast with all the help. We also had our young adult evening on Friday night, which went well. We ate dinner and studied a bit. We also had a night for the teenagers which went just about the same way with some games thrown in. Both had decent turn-outs. We also had the 5-8 year olds after church on Sunday where we made some awesome coconut gourmet cookies with the help of Djédjiga, Khaled's wife, teaching them to "make cookies" and find ways to serve others. We had our normal courses every morning, worked at the apartment on Monday, on tuesday we had club cool (which is a sort of VBS during the week) and church and tuesday afternoon bible study. Wednesday, we started going to Saint Maurt, where we will be helping out with activities and serving at a retirement home. We will be helping an organization called the "pink aprons" or "smocks" in english. They host activities every week for many at the home there. We also had lunch with Denise on Wednesday afternoon which was great as always. She had her birthday this week on thursday and she soon will be returning to the states as I've mentioned, in November I believe.Thursday we went to Eliane's as usual where we studied for quite a while. Yesterday and today we had some down time and worked at the appartment again!? I hope it will be done soon so the girls can get settled. We will be going to Spainnext Saturday to a little town 2 hours from Madrid to help with an up-and-coming church. We will be staying for a week there and after that will be having a teenage retreat at The Center. Miss Everyone! -Derek