Arjona, Bolivar COLOMBIA

Alright guys, I know it took me a while, BUT I'm back to fill you in again! Except now another week has flown by, and I have more to write about! Goodness!

Okay, as I told you, my week of outreach in a town called Arjona was awesome! I'll give you the run down on each day as well as some exceptional stories. :)

ready go!

So here's the lovely team. Far left is Anita, behind here is Andres, next to him is Felipe, me, behind me is Javier, and Yurley. Wow, we are all so different! Ranging in age from 16 to 24 and almost everyone from a different place (even within Colombia there are many MANY cultural differences from place to place).  One thing that we all had in common was a bit of weirdness and a love for laughter! So, as we got to know each other--things got pretty weird throughout the week! :D Anyway, I was really blessed to get to know each and every one of them. Watching God work in each of us during the week was really special.

So, soon after arriving on Saturday, we led a kids program and did some songs and skits. Nothing too crazy. We then moved into our home for the week which was the home of one of the staff members here who's name is Ceasar. (funny name, right?) His family was incredibly gracious to us. What servants of God! Every day while we were gone Ceasar's mom cleaned our rooms and made our beds and cleaned all of our messes! We had clean, new sheets three times in one week! I don't know about you, but my guests probably wouldn't get clean sheets three different times in one week. Oh his mom was always feeding us too. As if we didn't eat enough already at the church, she provided us with juice and snacks in between every meal!! And when I say juice, I'm not referring to JuicyJuice strawberry/blackberry or something of the like. When I say juice I mean, she went and bought fruit every day and made the juice. It's a different life here. This I hope you are beginning to understand. :)

Moving on, Sunday started off a little rough, at least in regards to the breakfast. A little background: every day while in Cartagena (at school) we have a hunk of bread and juice for breakfast. yes. every day. So when we had breakfast the first day at the church and it was bread--harder, drier, smaller than the bread at school...I was like, ohh boy. Oh and how could I forget? Squeaky cheese. Here on the coast they have this awful cheese. It's spongey, rubbery, bouncy, and it squeaks when you chew it. So that was complimentary of them to add.  :)  But yeah after that church was good. Except the speakers were so loud I could hardly hear afterwards.  Then we practiced some skits until lunch, of which consisted of squeaky-cheese-soup and rice. Later we did our first evangelism outreach in a poor neighborhood. After a good hard rain, the walk there was so beautiful and fresh. It was remarkable to see the houses in this area. We walked through several garbage dumps, aka streets, on the way there. When we arrived we were invited inside an older woman's home to visit. Then we went door-to-door inviting people to come and watch our skits and listen to the message. Wow. That was an eye-opener. This area is far from the poorest areas around, but the people have very little. Some houses had broken cement floors with plastic chairs for furniture. Others had dirt floors. Peering through the back door of one house I could see a huge sow with a bunch of piglets nursing...just off the doorstep. The picture above is from this night.

Monday we did an arts class for different youth in the church who want to learn how to act. Then we rested in the afternoon and did evangelism at night. It, again, was a time where God really moved in the people who attended the outreach service. Many came forward afterward to receive Christ as their Savior. And this makes it all worth it for me. I don't really like to act..well, that's not entirely true. I'm learning to like it more and more. But the skits we perform are deep, life-changing. And people are receptive to such a profound message of hope. Praise God! It was wonderful watching God provide for us as we served Him throughout the week. Monday night was one of those nights when I was so thirsty, yet didn't bring anything to drink..so I assumed it would be three or four hours before I could get something to drink, but the people of the church provided our team with refreshments after the service. Mmm...God has been helping me to really appreciate the little blessings.

Tuesday is full of stories!! All morning we worked to learn this Colombian dance, to the song 'Colombia Passion'.  I'm not gonna lie, it's a really awesome song and dance...but really difficult to learn! Most Colombians have been dancing since they were 6 or 7 years old. Then there's me. I've never in my life had formal dance lessons!! So I'm sure it was interesting for them to try and teach me. They kept saying...move your hips more! haha. For lunch we had BONE soup. It was very funny because everyone just watched me eat the whole time to see my reactions when I suddenly found myself chewing on a bone or piece of jiggly fat. :D yummy. Then Tuesday night we had evangelism again. I went with two guys to invite people from the neighborhood, and while on this walk we encountered a guy carrying an IGUANA!! Perhaps you are unaware of just how big and ugly these things are. If so, you should do some research. Here, they are dangerous to people so this guy had caught him to get him out of the neighborhood. So he set him down four feet from me!! With his tail, this iguana was probably as long as me. U.G.L.Y.   Then we did our skits and I preached at the end in Spanish!! AHH! I prepared a sermon and read it, so it was a little awkward. But, as a foreigner, I had their full attention. And it was a huge blessing to have some people come up afterwards and tell me how it blessed them. Because from my perspective, it went pretty awful. This just goes to show that when we are week, God is strong. Afterwards we went out for ice-cream, which I had been begging to have all week. happy girl!

Wednesday was okay, our evangelism night was a night of learning and growing for the team. We had to communicate some problems within the group and we struggled to be present and focused during the outreach skits. So, in some ways it was disappointing, but that's how we learn, right?!

Thursday was mostly relaxing and evangelism...praise the Lord for rest! Such a huge blessing to have time to read and sleep for a while!

On friday we went to a school where we performed for kids. That was fun, but a stretch for me as I was put on the spot to translate and read aloud a passage in the Bible for all of the kids. It was from the old testament and so a bit more difficult to recognize the words in Spanish, but they got the idea.

and here are the precious little ones. We are in the back dressed up like kids for the skits..hehe. They all wear uniforms here. Oh and i got to ride in a motor-taxi for the first time! which is basically a motorcycle with a trailer of seats attached to it. ohh the transportation of Colombians.  Also, it's important to note how much food we ate this day--more than every other day. Since we had to wake up early and skip breakfast at the church, Ceasar's mom gave us each a hunk of bread and hot cocoa (a common breakfast drink here). Then, after our performance at the school, they brought us empanadas...which is difficult to explain but basically like a potato-meal crust with meat and veggies inside...like pasty sort of..but fried. THEN we had our actual breakfast which consisted of arepa, another fried corn-meal type thing, fritas (three hunks of fried something-or-other), squeaky cheese, and to drink 'avena' or basically hot cereal. WE WERE STUFFED. That night we went to the poorest neighborhood of the town...such beautiful people! All those dark-skinned kiddos running around in their underwear... :). We were truly blessed by a church family who hosted our service and provided dinner afterwards. The meal was HUGE. and contained this thing called yucca. Oh. my. word. Ya know how you feel like you have cement in your stomach after you eat potatoes? Well, this is like that except way worse. It's thicker, denser, drier...and prepared with this nasty cheese/milk sauce. Oh but we ate it all gone to show our deep appreciation!! ;)   When we left I was offered a ride on a moped!! AHH I've never rode on anything of the like--and it was quite a thrill. :)

Well, Saturday and Sunday were similar. We spent some time hanging out with our new friends from the church watching a movie and things like that. It was so sad when we left after church on Sunday...the week was just incredible.

I learned so much Spanish and God really spoke to me about taking risks and communicating even when it's so difficult.  Anyway, I have to go now that I've written a novel. I hope you are still awake!

This week was equally incredible and I will have to tell you about it soon!!

Okay bye for now!
Chelsie