lobo marinos y manos congelados

i am yet again dumb struck that another week has gone by. they go so fast! but it was a really good week. some highlights:

• discovering a spot really close to the university where i can go and watch a whole bunch of lobo marinos (sea lions) just off shore. there's this big concrete structure just off the coast where there's aways about 6-12 sea lions and they're terribly fascinating to watch, watching them get up onto the structure (quite the feat), fight with each other, and all kinds of other sea liony things. maybe pictures to come soon.
  
• made a new friend who's from argentina, so she talks way different from the chileans, the argentinians pronounce their "ll" really different. it's quite amusing.
• playing random games with seba in an attempt to warm up my cold hands (my hands were cold b/c our house is cold b/c none of the houses here have central heating, and we don't use our little space heater thing much), including the hand slapping game (where you put your hands about the other person's a the person who's hands are on bottom try to slap the ones on top) and also the chilean version of rock, paper, scissors, which includes some pretty intense punishment when you lose (involving licking fingers and slapping the other person's hands really hard). so pretty much seba was beating me up b/c i'm terrible at both games (i don't know how you can be terrible at rock, paper, scissors, but i am...). classic brother sister time. especially considering it was really late and i was laughing uncontrollably but trying not to wake the whole house. you probably had to be there...
• getting two 7s on some of my essays (which are like A+s)
• seeing spider man 3, even though it wasn't that great
• getting mail from friends at home
• discovering a REALLY funny chilean show called "casado con hijos" the idea's taken off of the american show "married with children" which i really have never liked, but the chilean version is hilarious. it's really really chilean, with all the slang and everything, i'm gonna try and find a way to record an episode or something, just to show a bit of chilean culture

in other big news, i found out my dad's going to come visit me which i'm REALLY excited about. he's coming in june for the week of my b-day. so now i'm trying to come up with fun stuff for us to do while he's here, which i think will be pretty easy. it's gonna be an adventure for the both of us, but i think it'll be really cool!

so the books i've been reading while i'm here have really been great (not the spanish ones sadly... but still...). i've been reading the normal christian life by watchman nee for a while now. i think the title's a little misleading for this book, but it's mostly a book about romans 6-8 and all that Christ's death and resurrection does for us. it's a really incredible book. it presents alot of the foundational truths of our faith in a really incredible way i think. so here's a couple excerpt from things i read this week that i really really liked, and really talked about alot of the exact same things i've been thinking about and learning about alot lately.

"a brother who was trying to struggle into victory remarked to me one day, "i don't know why i am so weak." "the trouble with you," i said, "is that you are weak enough not to do the will of God, but you are not weak enough to keep out of things altogether. you are still not weak enough. when you are reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever, then God will do everything.." we all need to come to the point where we say: "Lord, i am unable to do anything for thee, but i trust thee to do everything for me.""

"have you despaired of yourself, or do you hope hat if you read and pray more you will be a better christian? bible-reading ad prayer are not wrong, and God forbid that we should suggest that they are, but it is wrong to trust even in them for victory. our help is in him who is the object of that reading and prayer. our trust must be in Christ alone."

"...the old habit of "doing" reasserts itself and we begin our old self-efforts again. then God's word comes afresh to us: ït is finished" (john 19:30). He has done everything on the cross for our forgiveness and he will do everything in usf or our deliverance. in both cases He is the doer. "it is God that worketh in you.""

food for thought. how wonderful is it that all that Christ asks of us, He himself accomplishes. He does it all... that's just a pretty incredible thought. learning to live in that prevision is sometimes so against my nature though, but i've been learning alot about that and it's been really great.

well, i'm super tired, so that all for now folks. i love and miss you all!!