Seminar Circuit

We've been away from the blog board for a while, attending to a marriage seminar and youth conference that have been in our area. Health Talents sponsored a guest speaker, Leonardo Rojas from Venezuela to lead the seminar and participate with the youth. His classes were excellent, and despite the conservative audience, he was able to get people to open up considerably. He was sought out by several people for individual counseling during his down time. At the youth conference he was equally straightforward about being prepared for courtship and dangers of and ways to avoid premarital sex. At the marriage seminar, 17 churches sent representative couples and the youth conference was attended by over 1500 people. What a great week for spiritual edification.

One of the couples at the marriage seminar who was asked to read from Song of Soloman to each other. It was pretty brave of them to read the steamy passage in front for the audience. The class was focused on using loving and affectionate words as couples. There were quite a few giggles in the background!

Another giggling crowd--the 13-17 year-old set at Leonardo's sex education workshop.

Of course our physical strength was totally sapped by the time we made it to the Capital to drop off Leo for his flight back. But we are enjoying a nice couple of nights in a hotel with top notch bedding and 5-star shower!

Today we are going to try to get some errands done including haggling over my license registration at the local RENAP (National Registry of Persons) office. They don't want to accept the diploma for registration because my middle name (Rene') has an accent mark on the diploma, but doesn't on my passport. The passport is written in all caps which technically shouldn't have punctuation. I even presented my birth certificate which has the accent, but the lady wasn't satisfied, saying it looked doctored up! So, after obtaining new certified copies of the birth certificate, we are going over today to see how accommodating they are. Pray for us please. It is easy to get impatient and irritated in these situations (with reason!), but it doesn't help the process along.

Tomorrow we pick up our visiting medical team to go back to Quiche. It will be a great week working in God's kingdom!