How can death look like this?

We had the chance on the  weekend of February 2-3 to experience some deeper tropical life where the jungle and mountains meet north of San Jose.  The way the trip was proposed to my class by our conversation teacher, Roxanna Vega a local here in San Jose, I thought that she was crazy.  Really, who wants to spend the night in place with the name "Valle de Muerte" or Valley of Death?  Missionary or not, that just sounds dumb.  To our surprise it was anything but death-like.  Of course the scenery was breathetaking, but all of us got to take our Spanish up a notch!  Roxanna's husband, Luis Antonio, has a microbus that seats 15 pax and drives it as a tourist bus for a living.  He took us there and oh by the way only speaks Spanish. Learning language in a classroom is great, but real life situations occur for which you do not own the vocabulary and you appreciate the opportunities available to study vocabulary and verbs.

I came to the realization that perhaps I am actually learning how to communicate when I was telling some of my friends about one of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Nacho Libre." Then Roxanna asked me to recount the entire scene for her husband in Spanish - and I did...with a little help! 

On a different note, I would like to leave you with this thought though.  On part of the trip we had to go fishing for supper, well did I ever catch the biggest freshwater fish of my life...a 7 kilo rainbow trout: which is 15.4 lbs!!!  Almost all of us caught a trout, even each of the boys caught a trout.  But keep in mind that 11 of 15 only caught 1.  There was so much fish, we had it for supper that night.  I even had it for breakfast the next morning with eggs.  There was still so much fresh raw fish, that we were able to provide a week's worth of fish for a local single mom!

Jesus told a few disciples to follow Him and He would make them fishermen of people's souls. On this trip we were all fishing with simply a hook, line and bait - no rods or reels.  When my fish got hooked and started swimming away the line dug down deep into my finger. And the finger began bleeding.  When I pulled this fish in, right when it got to the bank where the grass begins to grow, it got off the hook.  Without a second thought my instinct was to jump in the pond, and I did.   Immediately I grabbed the fish almost squeezing the life out of it and threw it upon the shore.  I lunged out with my boots full of water, my hands were slimy and immediately the volcanic dirt stuck to my hands when I grabbed my dirt-battered fish off the dry shore. That may seem a bit overboard, no pun intended, but that was my supper.  Quite frankly, that was my catch.  I had traveled for 3 hours, crossed a 10,000+ foot mountain, then rode a horse for 2 more hours , was at an elevation of 8,000+ feet, and I was hungry.  I had come a long way and I was not going to lose  my catch!  Friends, I want to encourage you with a thought.  At the end of the night I had an ugly cut finger, wet pants, sore back, and walked around barefooted while my wet leather boots dried out in mountainous tropical temperatures of just over 40 degrees F in a place called the Valley of Death...but I had my catch!  Thank you for sending me to language school to become a communicator in the Spanish Language so I can help communicate this Gospel to the people of Venezuela.  Each day our family is growing in the language, in the Latino culture, and developing our missionary calling.  We have so much more to learn, but we are here learning because of so many of you!  Thank you.  While we continue to grow, go places and get our feet wet searching after our catch of people's souls -  I encourage you to do the same.  I donate to 3 missionary families every month.  I pray regularly for some of my friends and fellow ministers, but that is not enough.  Jesus the Christ has called me, has our family, to be fishers of people's souls.  Accept my encouragement, go get your feet wet finding your catch of people's souls that only you can find!  Go on adventures so you can place your hands around your catch.  Follow Christ, get your hands dirty going after your catch of souls for the Kingdom of God!  Please visit our full website at www.nelson5missions.com