Getting to Know Porvenir

I just wanted to fill you all in on the grand town of Porvenir that all of us Ventaneros are living in. It is a really small, little country-bumpkin town with dirt streets and one main road. "The Mall" is a building with four stores inside of it, but only two are open on a regular basis. There are a few churches here...we live right next door to the big Catholic Church, and our church, Iglesia Cristiana de Porvenir, is an awesome, brightly painted building with several rooms and a kitchen...we eat after every service! I love the people in this town! They are so sweet and loving...very welcoming to us gringos :) We are very involved with the youth group here, and have made several good friends who we hang out with. My mom and the boys got to meet a few of them at church which was really fun for me...cause now all the talk about is how tall my family is! Haha...
We are going to a thing called a CONFRA on Saturday afternoon. A CONFRA is something directed by Pastor Marcos (our pastor) and it normally has about 700 people there. It is geared towards youth, but plenty of adults come too. It is just a big youth rally for the Christian youth here to come together and worship God. It is really awesome, this will be our second one since we've been here.
We got two Ventana puppies while we were in Culiacan and they both got sick about two weeks ago. They apparently had Parvo...which is a deadly disease common among dogs who don't have their shots. Someone accidentally gave Carrie the wrong information about when the shots were supposed to be given...so now we only have one puppy. Sunny, our little lightening bolt died on Tuesday morning between 12-2 a.m. Rachel and I had been nursing her all day on Monday, checking up on her every 45 minutes to an hour, and even got up every hour during the night, but she was just too dehydrated and sick for anything to be done. she climbed up onto the boy's porch and died...it was very sad, especailly for Micah, the directors' seven-year-old son, and we had a little memorial service for her. It is a miracle that Sunny's sister, Dot, is still alive. She got sick first, but recovered on her own. She is now super lonely since she no longer has her playmate, but is doing fine. We are going to begin trainging her tomorrow. I get to be the first teacher!
Just wanted to give you a picture of what life is like here on a regular basis...I won't be online for another two weeks because we have two youth groups coming down...this next week is a church from Pheonix, Arizona, and the one after that is from Portland, Oregon. We are very excited! I get to be the game director for the week! Whoo-hoo!
Thanks for your prayers! Much love to everyone!
Mikaela