Sunday, July 11, 2010

I keep thinking that everyday will be the last day of posting daily, since there just can’t be anymore things happening. Then it is another really great day. Today in Sunday school, we had a visitor who just moved to Panama from the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Another couple we just met last week invited us to their apartment in the city for lunch. Actually, there were seven of us from the class. Such an interesting mix of people. We had to be the most dull ones having only lived in multiple cities in the Midwest rather than all over the world! Three of the people have been Bible translators. Hearing their stories of living in the jungle in houses on stilts among the indigent people was fascinating. And we think we are really “roughing it”, living in a one bathroom apartment. One gentleman and his family had lived with a native Indian tribe for ten years, learning their language, creating a written language (which contained seventeen syllables versus our five syllables in the English language) and then translating the entire Bible. He recited John 3:16 for us in the native language and we thought he must have been quoting the entire chapter. No! Apparently you don’t translate word for word, but you use multiple phrases stung together. There were just so many interesting stories every place from everyone. Like I said, we are the boring ones. Here we thought we were really taking a big step to come down here and we are just one of many in Panama. Everyone is so international. It is just way too interesting.
Driving home from their house was a very unusual Panamanian experience. The roads were clear. The final game of the World Cup soccer tournament was on. This county is so totally nuts over the World Cup. Every car has a flag of their favorite team. Our car MUST be a rental since we have no flag.
This is the first morning our walk has been destroyed because of a tropical downpour. And is it ever a downpour. I don’t ever remember rain like this in the states. Wayne has to go downtown to get his picture taken and I will probably have to grab a cab to go to my class. We have heard it is pretty close to impossible getting cabs in weather like this. Guess we will see. Yet another Panama experience. Yep, living here is totally different than being a tourist but such fun to figure all this out.