Day 100: Whoa, that was fast!

Can you believe it's already been 100 days into the year? It's amazing how quick time can go; I feel like it was barely a week ago since I even arrived into the country! A lot has happened so far into the journey, and I've received what I expected to receive in the 2 years here and more, just in these past several weeks. That just goes to show "what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived-these things God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9) It's an understatement to say I've been blessed; it's WAY more than that.

The morning started with awesomeness; I mean Street Teams, of course! So today, we were short quite a bit of people, so with Tower 1 we only had one full group of 4 to go through the 16-floor building. Fortunately, a veteran Street Teams volunteer by the name Allan came to join us, so I went with him. We didn't clean anything, but we had a couple deep and meaningful conversations with people. We were talking with Maria, a sweet Russian lady who was the first person I met in the Towers during my time here, and I got to try out my Russian with her. She said that it was good, especially my pronunciation of the words (that alone made my day). It was weird having just 2 guys knocking on doors, but it was a cool experience, and Allan even had me carry the leader's clipboard since I was familiar with most of the people there. After that wonderful morning, I was originally going to meet with the band to go over our performance at least one more time, but unfortunately it had to be postponed due to multiple scheduling conflicts. So I took the opportunity to go back to Eastgardens Shopping Center to try and find an English-Russian dictionary. The only things they had were DVD volumes, which was something I wouldn't want to use. So I just ordered a small, inexpensive pocket dictionary that should come in the mail within the next week. I came back to the Meritons around 3, where we had the band meeting; we discussed mainly the staging for the performance day as well as the next song for our second performance. we decided on Fix You by Coldplay, since that song has the potential to go in any direction we're curious to try out. Then it was time for evening church, with a guest speaker, Rick Godwin. Mr. Godwin spoke on the great "I Am" and how we should figure out who we are and take it into account with our daily lives. It was very inspiring. The after-church celebration in the garage (to my absolute joy and surprise) was Mexican themed. The reason I was excited about it was because I was able to eat some legitimate Hispanic food again for the first time since I was in the States: tacos. Ah...... delicious tacos... anyways, today was fantastic. Still in shock that it's the 100th day of the year so soon, but fantastic nonetheless.

God bless,
Steven