Hello Everyone,
A lot has gone on these past four weeks since arriving in Colombia. I thought about sending off some postcards and letters, but it turns out that it would cost me between thirty five and forty US dollars to send a single letter off. Not cool.
Anyways, our trip is going great. It started out in Cartegéna - a port city- where we spent the first week of our trip. They spoiled us with wonderful hospitality and amazing food. The food here is rice like I expected, but so much better that just bland white rice, lots of meats and exotic fruits. Everything is just so good. I think my favorite though was the fish that they served us in one of the villages that we went to. We opened up our ministry here with lots of open-airs doing our preformances: dances, dramas (one of which is the famous lifehouse drama. You can find it on youtube), songs, speaking, games, and anything else we could think of. I really got the chance to bless the locals when I showed intrest in learning Spanish. They got to practice their English and I Spanish. This really would help me out in the upcoming weeks and still continues to bless people. The first week God really challenged me as a leader to step out more in our team times, and just being a spiritual leader for the team. It is something that I am still working at.
Then we left for Bocachica which is a small island off the coast of Colombia. There we continued our open-air ministry, but we also added to that labor projects and work in schools. Our main labor project was building a latrine for a local family, who other wise would have to go in the ocean or sneek out at night to go. This was actually one of my highlights of our time there. The first school ministry we did as a group turned out to be very disheartening, because as soon as we started our presentation, half, if not all the kids started to cry! A few actually had to leave the room! This week did prove to be very challenging for me though. The first night here I cut my right foot playing soccer and it got infected, and swelled twice its size.Both feet however were already suffering from an allergic reaction. Most likely from all the sun. Oh, and I managed to pinch a nerve and lost all feeling in my left hand! So for the rest of the week, I had to soak my feet and take a series of four shots, two in each forarm, and take some pills, which I am still taking. By the end of this week both of my feet were completely better.
The third week we spent in Santa Anna. It was here that they found out I still had a piece of glass in my right foot...oops. We worked directly with a church the entire time here. The mornings of the first two days we had half the team do a roof building project, and the rest of the team went into a nearby town to work with a school. The truth is we were in the middle of nowhere between Santa Anna and Araraca. You will probably not be able to find either on a map. They are vey small towns. It is very hot everywhere that we have been so far in Colombia, but this by far was the hottest. It was very dry too. I think the locals said that it had not rained in nearly nine months! The rest of our time here we spent working with schools and doing open-airs.
My hand is doing a lot better, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could be praying for our teams health, it really been getting attacked. Quite a few have complained about swelling ankles, sunburn, ext, because of the intense heat. But we also have another girl who is laid up in bed with an even more severe case of infection than mine in one of her toes. But praise God she is doing much better today!
We are in Cartegéna again, and in two weeks we will be heading to Bogotá. Please keep us in your prayers.
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