How things go.

Jon here,

I love the culture here. There is a time for work and a time for rest. But different for the "resting from work" lifestyle back home that I was used to, here there seems to be a "working from rest" mentality. Life is taken a lot slower here and it is easy to see all the way God has provided for for Paul and Jay Mikaelson. Realationships between people and curtousy manners are taken very strongly here. There was a certain kind of handshake that Jay taught us so that we could be properly greeted at the church we were going to. We are to greet everyone. Even people on the street that we are just passing. And when we do that, we just can't say hello. We try to hold a conversation with a complete stranger while trying to break the language barrier. IT'S AWESOME!

People here love to eat. They also like to savour it. They eat very slowly. Jay is an amazing cook and she makes every thing from scratch since there are no canned goods in Caranavi. Fresh mangos, papaias, bananas (while we were eating we ran out and someone just went outside and grabbed some more right off the tree!). It is so good. Yesterday we went to Pauls airstrip and had steak and cheese rice (chunks of fresh bolivian cheese mixed in [Elise! You would love it!]). Almost every day Ben Rude looks at me and states "We are eating like kings." So you can ease your mind Ben's mom, he is not that picky. I am always so amazed at the many food bearing tree there are around here. Coconuts (we found 2 today), tangerines, banana, papaia, mango, chocolate(!!!), coffee(!!!!), the list goes on (or maybe thats it. Regardless the list will end). God has blessed this land and has given so much to Paul and Jay and they are wonderful stewards of it. They give so much.

We have finished painting the youth center and will now move on to Paul's airstrip tommorrow to pick rock as to avoid having his plane run into them. We work from about 9:00am-12:00pm then from 2:00pm-6:00pm on average, but there are always opportunities to serve throughout the day.

It's hot. Y'know FYI. My goodness. It cools down a bit at night, and I love when it's about to rain since it then cools off from a while. Nights are sticky but very relaxing. Almost every night Ben and I have had a battle with at least one giant (in our eyes) bug that had crawled under the door or had flown in when the door was open. Of course I was the heroic one and flexed my muscles to scare them off or used my huge brain to outsmart and overcome the pesky bugs while Ben was hiding in his room....ok ok we were both screaming like little girls "Get it!" "No YOU!" "It's there! It crawled under the BED!!" We have been getting better and I think that by the time this trip is over we will have conquered our fears of creepy crawlies.

I keep trying to upload pictures but the internet has turned out to not like me and will not let me successfull put them up. I'll keep trying though!

Willow Thompson has not been feeling to good with her headaches being a constant pain but she is a trooper. Ben got bit by an unknown bug on one of the first days here and it has not stopped hurting. I am allergic to somthing in the air that has come in the past 2 days and I have been sneazing like the dickens. Annelise, our fearless leader is just peachy, and if she isn't she is doing a great job of hiding it. I am just mentioning these things as suggestion for what you could pray for us. Continue to pray for guidence and wisdom and protection over us. Thank you.

Well, that's a few things that I have noticed throughout the trip. I still can't believe we are here. Every morning I look out to the jungle mountains and breath in the air, admire God's artistic skill, and sigh at how could I be see this right now.

Thanks for your time guys.
Peace out
-=Jonathon Leslie=-