5 or 6 weeks later. . . .

I have had a pretty eventful past couple months actually.. 6 weeks. The WEEK ONE: I was on "vacation" to the mountains, called La Colonia Tovar. It is a German settlement, and now a toursit town, where all the buildings have a german look, white with black lines.. It was a good time I enjoyed the 'cool' temperature, and the refreshing coolness of the mountains. The landscape was amazing, breathtaking. However, it was a time where I was wreslting, as I wanted to go on vacation to relax, and refresh my spirit, to spend time with God kinda as a retreat, and to me God was silent. . . Through His silence He was preparing me for the weeks to come and the events that were to come!!
We return home from the Colonia, about 8 hour car adventure, through mountains, curves, tunnels, and Caracas (the capital city). Back to work, in one of the church plants with the childrens ministry. And for me more work preparing a seminar for youth to teach, train youth about missions. . . Deciding what was the most important to share, and how to deliver the message, took time preparing.
WEEK TWO: Missions training - I go to the church to help out with missions training and to my surprise they don't have ANY help, so during my week of vacation - God was talking to me about this missions training and even though I am ''on vacation" for this time - I felt him telling me, "Heidi, you are here to help and to serve, be willing to help in any and all areas that you can." SO I told the young man who was in charge, Jose Noguera, that hey, I'm willing to help in whatever, the house, the car, cooking, leading games, leading a team - if you need leaders etc. So he put me in the kitchen to help cook, then run errands, then put me in charge of team building games and activities, plus the missions class that I was in charge of, and to be a co- leader of a team. I was okay there were a lot of leaders need and a lot of different cities that they were going to so I was okay with that b/c there was one city that I didn't want to go to. . . CARACAS was the only city/ trip I didn't want to go on. Tuesday I give my first class and the youth are great very responsive very eager to learn and to serve. And Tuesday night as we were closing the day, the guy with the list to team leaders and places was sitting next to me, and I saw part of the list so I was like, Hey let me see that list. . . In my heart, I knew, one of those feelings, my name is going to be next to the city of Caracas. Sure enough, there it was Caracas - Jose Noguera, Heidi Hoover. I knew, that it was God sending me to Caracas, I didn't understand why. But I understood that it was GOD. The rest of the week was great with training, getting to know more youth of the church, sharing with them, talking to them. Also time to prepare and pack for Caracas, help send off the other missions teams.
WEEK THREE: Caracas - We leave at 8:00 in the morning for a long 8 hour bus ride to Caracas. The whole bus Jose was talking with me, asking me questions, and sharing a lot of things. We were sitting right where the name of the bus was so we couldn't see any of the scenery.. We arrive in Caracas and I'm expecting tons, and tons of people and crowds that are horrible. We arrive and 2 leaders from the church are waiting for us at the bus terminal to guide us through Caracas, to the metro - subway, and to the church. . The subway, not bad either - it actually reminded me of Santiago, Chile.