Hola Amigos! So, the time has come for me to tell you about my trip to Venezuela! YAY! First off, if you are wanting the short "how was it" version, it was absolutely AMAZING!! By far the best trip ever!! I got to meet some of the coolest people in the world and I experienced God in a way I never had before. It was AWESOME! Now for the little longer, more in detail version of my trip. Be prepared, I hope you aren't in a hurry........:)

So, I got to Paul's house around 9:15 Friday morning, the 23rd, and we headed to the airport. At the airport, we met up with the rest of our group, Joel and Jenny (my future roommate!). Friday was kinda boring, we just flew the whole day. The flights were good. We flew from Indy to Atlanta to Caracas. The plane rides gave plenty of time for some much needed bonding and filling in of each other's lives. It was nice. We got to Caracas around 8 or 9. Johnny, the missionary we worked with, and his family were all there to pick us up as well as Daniela who is a girl from CSF who is Venezuelan and came down a week early to visit family. When we got into the city, we were greeted my thousands of beautiful lights. The mountains looked like Christmas trees. We were later informed that those beautiful lights were coming from the "barrios" which are houses that are pretty much just stacked on top of each other. The poorer people live in the barrios, and during the day, it is not pretty at all. Anyway, we were all then taken to where we would be making our homes for the next 10 days. We three girls stayed with Senora Aura. Her house is amazing! When I walked in, I thought I walked into a castle. First off, she has tons of paintings hanging everywhere. They were gorgeous! Her furniture is kinda victorianish, if that's a word. Either way, the house was amazing! It made a nice home for 10 days.

Saturday, we got up and headed to the park where all the youth hang out. Now, I will refer to the people we hung out with as the "youth" or "kids" but most of them are older than me. We worked with kids from 17- mid 20's. We met a few of them at the park. They all go there to play soccer. It was fun. We then sat down with Johnny and had kinda an orientation type thing. He just let us know exactly what we would be doing and what not. Then we went to a Venezuelan restaurant for lunch. It was amazing! Arepas and Cachapas are delicious! We spent the rest of the day getting all of our souvenir shopping out of the way. Then just kinda hung out.

Sunday was a long, but great day. All we did all day was go to church and eat! Their church doesn't start until 12:30 or 1, something I definitely think we should do here in the states! That morning, Senora Aura made us an amazing breakfast. We went to church and were there till about 2:30 or 3. Then we went to Wendy's for lunch and just hung out until it was time for youth group. Youth group was a lot of fun. Jenny and I got up with Paul and taught a few English praise songs to the youth group. That's another thing...Worship was awesome! It was so cool because even though we weren't exactly sure what we were singing, we could still feel the spirit. We knew most of the songs because they were songs we sing here, they were just in Spanish. It was just really cool to be able to worship in another language. Jenny also gave her testimony that night at youth group. It was really good. Then we just hung out with the youth some more. It was a lot of fun. I got to practice my Spanish on some of them. They are so encouraging! Even if you totally mess up and say something really stupid, they just kinda laugh it off and correct you. They love it when you try to talk to them in Spanish. After youth group, we went to grab some dinner and then headed home for the night.

Monday we got up met some of the youth and we climbed up the mountain to Avila. I'm not sure if Avila is the name of the mountain or the name of the peak that we went to. Not sure...either way it was gorgeous. It was definitely a workout hiking up it, but it was definitely worth it. We could see the entire city and it was beautiful. The way down the mountain was a lot of fun because we were able to talk a little more since we weren't so out of breath. We were able to chit chat. It was fun. After the mountain, we just hung out for a little bit and showered and went to the mall that night. This mall is outrageous! It is the biggest mall in South America. It is HUGE! The girl that we hung out with most of the time, Linda (pronounced Leendah), said that she hasn't even seen the entire mall, and she's lived there her whole life! It was insane! But it was really nice because stuff was really cheap, at least for us. After the mall, we went back to Linda's place and watched "13 Going on 30." Great chick flick! After the movie, it was bed time and we all headed home.

Tuesday was kinda a blah day. We didn't really do much. We slept in and got some stuff ready for camp and then went to the mall again and went to dinner with a bunch of people. Other than that, not much happened.

Well, I think I'm going to leave it at that for now. Wednesday we headed to camp so I'll post more tomorrow or Friday and let you know how all of that went. I'll give you a hint...it was AWESOME! Hopefully you enjoyed the first half of my trip to Venezuela. If you did, great! And it gets even better!!! If you didn't and were totally bored out of your mind while reading this, don't worry, it gets better!!!

Until then... Adios! Necesito acostarme. Estoy muy cansada. Te quiero!