Last week we took a trip to Cali to visit Stephany's dad (Chris) and some friends in Cali. We stayed with a really nice brother and his family in the house next door to Chris. This was really a fun and exciting trip for us as you're about to discover in the upcoming blog posts.
Our trip started early in the morning by taking a taxi from our house at 4:30 AM up to the airport for our flight at 6:45 AM. We bought tickets through a "no frills" airline here called Viva Colombia. In total, our tickets cost us about $40 round trip per person, so they are a pretty economical airline to take for a weekend getaway in Colombia. We had to fit all of our clothes in two backpacks to avoid paying a luggage fee, which was as much as the price of the tickets!
One of the local malls in Cali called Chipi-Chape. There's a nice hotel connected to the mall too.
We went to a meeting with the Cali English group on Friday and went to a couple's house afterwards for empanada's and to hang out. The couple standing in the back just moved to Cali, Colombia from Pennsylvania last month, so they are just getting settled in.
They had a piano at the house that nobody plays, so I dusted off the keys a little bit for them :-) This was my second time playing the piano since we moved here, so it felt good to get back on the keys.
We made a short bus trip to Palmira to visit some old friends for a few days. Palmira is about an hour outside Cali. This is the family that Stephany and her sister Jessica stayed with for 6 months about 3 years go (
check it out!). This Spanish group just started 2 weeks before our visit and most of the brother and sisters are pioneers. In this picture, we are standing outside a sister's house which they are using as their Kingdom Hall.
There are about 30 people that attend this small group. (Note: This is also a picture of the sister's Living room). Behind the curtain and podium is her kitchen.
These two little guys were hanging out in the back room. After the meeting, they like to mingle with everyone.
We had a brief meeting for service at 9:00, then...
...it's time to hit the road.
You never know what you're gonna see out there. It looks like this cow broke loose from his field, but didn't make it too far :-(
Along the road, there are Banana and Guava trees to pick a quick snack off of. I picked this fresh Guava right off the tree and took a big bite out of it only to find a worm! We did load up a bag full of guava's though to make juice later.
The second day in the ministry, it was raining, so we had to use other means of transportation. The territory in the mountains was so beautiful, and everything was so fresh! There were absolutely amazing views with the clouds between the mountains and banana trees and coffee plants growing everywhere.
This was awesome!
The territory is a long way up in the mountains, but Jesus (the man in the raincoat, not the Christ) talks with just about everyone on the way up.
Eventually it stopped raining and we could put away the rain coats and enjoy the misty mountain views.
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What is nice in this territory is that pretty much everyone respects and will listen to the Bible's message, so all of the effort to contact these people is very rewarding. Jesus (pictured above) is conducting about 5 bible studies already in this territory.
We finished up the day with 2 Bible studies. This lady was very proud of her parrot as you can see. While on this study, the lady made us some breakfast with her chicken's egg that was big enough to feed two people!
Over all, this was a very cool experience with the brothers in Cali and Palmira. Almost everyone in the mountains lives off the land, or has access to fresh produce. As we were walking around the territory or conducting Bible studies, it wasn't uncommon to have a chicken or rooster walk in and crow at us a few times.
