Wearing Silver and Empty Coffers

To my most amiable readers...

Well, through God's grace we've done it again. This past Sunday we completed in a 2000 meter women's lightweight doubles race held by the club Centenario in honor of the Carabineros de Chile (Chilean Police Force). We competed against the same gals that took gold in Nationals (professional rowers from the top club in Chile, to the right of us above), and another pair of gals from Concepcion.

Right before the race we were rather full of jitters. Yoya is now working full time and cannot train during the week, leaving only Saturdays for the two of us to go out together. She was nervous that her physical condition was not up to par for the grueling race ahead of us. I was just downright dreading the physical pain of it. I asked Nancy, Liz, and Janell to pray for us before we got in the boat. We both calmed down immediately!

What followed was our strongest race EVER. We never dropped our rythym, finishing strong. And this time the gals from club Phoenix beat us by less, and we were very encouraged. Both of us had wondered if our silver in nationals would be our last medal together due to her work commitments and were overjoyed that the fun isn't over!
I'd like to thank the folks at Landisville Mennonite who were praying for strength and perseverance for us during the race. It gave our floundering club a lot of joy to bring some medals home and was an encouragement to our dedicated trainer, Felipe.
Here we are post-race with the Hostetters and Janell Weaver.
And what of the empty coffers?

Dustin lost our debit card (our only way to access our stateside accounts), and we're going on two and a half weeks without money! I'm making lots of homemade bread, lentils, rice, oatmeal, and such things and we're totally exploiting all the frozen juices, fruits, and meats we had stored. Our "grocery shopping" is me biking up to the store with a bag of loose change, or Dustin walking to the corner store to buy 6 eggs. HA!

But God is so faithful and we truly have not felt the lack. And it's been a GREAT reminder of the blessings we live with day by day.

Your Most Devoted,
Sarah