Hola Todos!

Well, it's been about three more weeks and my time in Colombia is almost at an end.  I have met some wonderful people, had some wonderful times, and have really learned a lot.  The first week here at the institute in Cartegena, Colombia was spent learning about the process - especially the importance of keeping detailed and accurate notes and information about what has been done and who you've spoken to.  In addition, we studied Conozcamos (basically the Spanish version of Anna's Presentation) and some other deepening themes to help us prepare for going out to the towns.  Which is what we did for most of the second and third weeks.  Last week, on Tuesday we went out to the villages, mine was called Santa Rosa, where we stayed until Friday.  This was the teaching part of our trip.  Our goal was 50 new Baha'is - and we reached that goal in two days.  Mind blowing, right?  The people are simply ready.  The people we shared Conozcamos with were people who already knew a little bit about the faith - they had kids in childrens classes or they were or someone in their family had started Ruhi books - but we simply shared with them some of the main beliefs and a little history of the faith and at the end we ask "so, do you believe in Baha'u'llah" and almost every time they said yes.  I think four people total in Santa Rosa said no, they didn't want to sign a card... but everyone that I saw simply said yes.  The other two days were spend starting the consolidation process, the deepening the new believers.  One of the main things that struck me was the confidence that the other members of my group had in the process.  For instance, they pushed me to give part of the presentation, even though I have very bad spanish - they trusted that the message is so powerful that my broken spanish can't mask the truth.  This past week was the other part of the consolidation process.  We took the bus every day to the village and tutored Ruhi books or deepened new believers.  I gave my first Ruhi class in spanish.  And now, I have had three different Ruhi classes - alone.  Yesterday, I spent an entire day with one family.  In the morning I continued Book 2 with a girl, Cindy, who I had tutored the week before.  They had invited me to eat lunch with them - so I ate soup with cow stomach.. it was actually quite tasty but I had to not think about what it was.  And for the rest of the day, when Cindy had to go to colegio (high school) I sort of tutored Book 1 with an uncle of hers who is not a Baha'i.  It was interesting because he kept saying "There's not enough time!"  so he wanted to skip the reading (which is my favorite part because that's easy - no thinking, just reading!) and go straight to answering all of the questions.  Plus, he wanted to discuss all sorts different topics - especially politics (he is a fan of Obama).  It was a good day, but by 4 o'clock, about the time we needed to leave to catch the bus back to Cartegena, I could barely understand him any more.  I was so tired - everything he said I would have to ask him to repeat it.  That was my first entire day of only spanish.  All the other days I would have short conversations in English, or at least know that I could ask someone else to tell me what was said.. but yesterday I was alone with only spanish speakers and no English at all.  Good day, but hard.

This afternoon we are supposed to get together with the other members of our countries and begin our teaching and consolidation plans for our respective areas.  I don't know how that is going to go for us Costa Ricans, since none of us know exactly where we will be, what it will be like, or who we'll have to work with.  But I know that once we get there we'll be doing all sorts of good things for the Baha'is in that area.