Week Ending 7 de Septiembre

I generally have a hard time thinking backwards. I generally can't remember what I did yesterday or the day before, and anything beyond a week ago is impossible unless I have recorded it somewhere. Decades ago I took to heart the passage from Philippians 3 (one of my favorite chapters in the Bible) "forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." That is probably why I so appreciate Wanda's invitation to record each weekend - it forces me to record the small but beautiful elements of a particular moment in time.

This past weekend has mostly been about the sky. The 4th Tropical Storm in 10 days (Lorena) arrived on Wedesday and has hung around until now. However, this one has been a real teaser: no wind and no rain (until very early this morning) but VERY dark clouds covering the sky from Tuesday through today. So here are a bunch of sky pictures for you. This was what the sky looked like on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday:

By Friday evening everyone thought that the system had basically passed, and we had a stunning sunset.


However, Saturday morning it was still cloudy. Early Sunday morning (while it was still dark) we actually had some rain. When we got up the sky was blue, the sun was beating down on us, and it was HOT and MUGGY. But...

By late this afternoon the dark clouds were back. So far, no more rain, which is probably just as well since there are quite a number of buildings around here that lost parts of their roofs in Tropical Storm Juliette a week ago. However, the evening sky tonight was beautiful, with the sliver of a moon peeking through the clouds:


This entire past week has been unsettled since we've all been waiting for the Storm That Didn't Happen.

Our team didn't go out to the small community of Meliton Albanez to serve on Friday because (I think) it actually was raining there and if you saw my post from last week you'll know that their church has no roof. On Saturday I usually cook things to use for meals in the coming week (rice, beans, chicken, etc.), but it was too hot and muggy to do that, so I made a salad for dinner using some of the plantains that had been on the plant next to our house that Tropical Storm (actually Hurricane) Juliette knocked over.

All this fruit is from our plants - the passion fruit and mango as well as the plantains. On Sunday we decided to go out to eat for dinner because it was still too hot to cook, and also as a belated birthday treat for me. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, owned by a neighbor of ours.

David wanted me to take a picture of his sangria because, as he said, it was memorable - very tasty, with lots of fruit:

Unfortunately I didn't have my glasses on and I only took one picture, so you'll have to put up with the fuzziness.

Here's a view of the park across the street from the restaurant:

Although we're surrounded by desert, our town is clearly an oasis, with plenty of trees!

That's it for me this weekend. I hope yours was full of good things. Head on over to Reinventing Mother to read about other people's weekends.