Jesús habla las plenas

I was reading Luke 9 this week with a friend. The end of the chapter finishes off with Jesus responding to a man who said ‘I will follow you wherever you go’ by talking about how Jesus has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus does not promise that everything will be smooth sailing if you decide to follow him.

In our discussion my friend said Jesus really talks straight, or ‘habla las plenas’, he doesn’t beat around the bush, doesn’t say anything other than the truth. In response to people wanting to follow him, he wants them to think about it first, he tells them it won’t be easy and wants them to count the cost. But he tells the whole truth…the cost is well worth it because the reward is so great – eternal life spent in his presence.

It is a great thing to discover anew with my friend the character of Jesus, that he does tell it like it is, and what he has to say is the most important thing we can pay heed to in this world where we often have to wade through a lot of white noise to get to the point.

Parque Nacional Poducarpus

That was a great hike! I can't believe how easy it is to get to 3500m above sea level from our house. Diego and I got dropped off at 10am on Friday expecting to do a 3 day hike. We began climbing with only 30m visibility, things were not looking good. We managed to get from 2750m to 3500m in around one and a half hours while I lost the sole of my shoe. Not a good thing as the amount of mud that we walked through meant that I fell over more times than I care to mention. 

As we walked along the ridge of this park we had a GPS to make sure we didn't get lost in all the cloud, and we were glad of that given the crazy signs that weren't even stuck down very well. However, the track on top was fairly well marked, it being the deep trench loaded with mud. With sticks poking into legs and mud coming close to our knees we made camp at around 4.30pm and about 5.30pm we had our first view, for 15 minutes, of what we had missed all day, what a view! After a great dinner, we were off to bed with this goal: If it's clear in the morning we keep on going, if not, we return. 

Day two was no better, in fact I believe it was worse. It rained continually for the entire day and we actually only stopped twice on the 5 hour return to make sure we could change and be warm again. There were moments when we both had trouble feeling our hands due to the cold wind blowing across the tops of the mountain. 

All in all it was a great experience and a really enjoyable time with Diego. Maybe next time we will make our goal, La Laguna del Compadre!

No wonder I stumble over my words in spanish!

Check this out for a word - otorrinolaringologico. How can it legitimately have so many syllables??? Little wonder I sometimes get stuck half way through trying to say a word, let alone a complete sentence!