For months before every mission trip I wrestle with God asking Him to superintend our trip. I always know in my heart that if His presence, power, and His Divine direction is not with us that all that we do will be in vain. There is always spiritual warfare of all kinds that precedes a trip like this and I have come to pray specifically that the Lord will be our vanguard and go before us removing every obstacle and paving our way before us. And in my humanness I always continue to be amazed when He comes through and shows Himself mighty on our behalf. Today was another example of this taking place.
We had planned for weeks to go to a certain orphanage this morning that I have been to many times and is one of my favorites and at the last minute this weekend there was a snag and we had to adjust our plans. Though I was tempted to be disappointed and concerned, I knew that many of God’s richest blessings on our ministry here in Colombia have come through what we would have considered a detour and so I waited for the Spirit to show us His plan. I was not disappointed to say the least.
We headed out this morning to a new part of Bogota to which I had never been called Soacha. It is a suburb of over 1 million people and for the most part it is very poor. We soon discovered that the place we were going was up in one of the mountains that ring the city of Bogota and after a somewhat harrowing ride up a very primitive “road” we arrived at a very poor neighborhood carved into the side of the mountain.
Many of the people here have been displaced by the forty-year war in Colombia and have cobbled together “houses” on this hillside with whatever materials they could find. An elderly woman, affectionately known throughout the town as Abuelita (Granny), runs a hot lunch kitchen there for the children of the neighborhood many of whom only get the one meal a day that she provides. We were to be her guests today and spend time with the orphans and impoverished children of this refugee city.
Before the children arrived we hiked through the neighborhood and visited several homes of the families whose children we were going to spend time with. It is impossible to explain the primitive way that these people live. They have no running water except for one hour per week and they have to collect all the water that they will need for the whole week in that one hour.
They live in shacks pieced together from bricks, tin, lumber, anything that they can put together. There are no sewers, or drainage other than the streets. When it rains hard many times their houses are washed away and they have to begin again. Our contact here is a young pastor named Jordan that we met through Pastors Hector & Liliana. He and his family minister in this place and they are very passionate about their work here.
The children arrived and had their lunch and then the fun began. Deidra has collected three large suitcases full of toys, balls, puzzles, frisbees, crayons and coloring books and such. It wasn’t very long before everyone was gathered around the team playing and drawing and this went on for over 2 hours.
Two different singing groups were with us as well and they sang the gospel and then shared the gospel with the children and prayed with them.
It was amazing to see how quickly the children responded to the love and how quickly the team responded to the love that the children showed so freely. Luke and I stepped outside with a couple of frisbees and it wasn’t long before several teenage and adult men had gathered around and Luke was teaching them to throw and catch. I told him it looked like he had the makings of a Frisbee ministry here in Colombia. He flashed his signature smile and kept playing.
As the afternoon passed I noticed that Pastor Timothy was spending a lot of time with Pastor Jordan asking many questions about their dream and vision for this place. It wasn’t long before Pastor Jordan shared his dream of buying some land right there on that street and building a larger place where Granny could feed many more children and the gospel could be shared with the community. Pastor Timothy, in his irresistible “Git er done” fashion said, “Well let’s go find some land.” So up we went and started hiking through the neighborhood looking at different available chunks of land on this hillside.
It wasn’t long before they had decided upon a piece of property and began negotiations… but that is a story for Pastor Timothy to share so stay tuned but let me say this, only eternity will tell how many souls will be affected by our little “detour” to Soacha today. Soon it was time to go and the precious little kids gathered around and told us goodbye, begging us to come and see them again soon. We had a wonderful dinner at one of our favorite places here and returned to the hotel full of joy and totally exhausted and excited about what the rest of the week will bring. Once again Lord, You have shown yourself all wise and guided our trip marvelously and we praise You.
More Photos
[spacing amount=”20″]
Luke, Oscar Useche, and I awoke Sunday morning with the knowledge that the night before had only been the beginning of what God was going to do this weekend. We all three woke before the alarm and were rearing to go. Pastor Jaun Carlos had been my friend for about 3 years. Every trip he invites me to preach in his church but it has never worked out so he and I were both very excited when he arrived at 8:00 am to pick us up so I could preach in his 9 am & 11 am service (they have 4 services every Sunday). Pastor Juan Carlos started out by apologizing for how ugly the slum was going to be where his church is. I told him that he didn’t know this but I grew up in street evangelism and I love the barrio. When my wife and I always lived in the war zone and took in hungry, abused, and abandoned teens (over 15 in our first 5 years of marriage) and so I was honored to preach in his church. 
The hair was standing up on my arms as we drove through the littered streets of the Suba Barrio and my heart leaped as we climbed the stairs to the second floor church which seats about 150 people. It was packed for both services with about 3/4 teenagers and 20 somethings that have been saved in the last 7 years out of drugs and gangs and everything imaginable. What an amazing and anointed work God is doing here through Pastor Juan and Pastora Claudia and how blessed and honored I was to be there.
My translator Oscar and I preached our hearts out and praise God the Holy Spirit who showed up mightily in both services and once again the altars were filled both times with weeping people desperate for Jesus. In the second service I was so happy to see my dear pastor friends Lucas and Doryanne and their daughter Sara and her boyfriend Jurger. These ar some of the dearest people in the world to me and we could hug each other enough. God is so good to have such a huge and diverse family of sweet people as these. We had a delightful time with the pastor and his wife at lunch and then cafe con leche for desert. 
Soon it was time to head to another barrio to preach for our new friend Henry. I had just met Pastor Henry on Friday when we had the “God Detour” at his Christian School. His church started with 4 people in a garage and then they moved into a building that seats 150 and then they moved to a park nearby and set up tents and now they have multiple services and 700 people show up in the park for Sunday morning under the large tents. The church workers start setting up in the park every Sunday morning at 6:00am and they don’t finish taking everything down until 4:00 pm Sunday afternoon just in time to get to the Sunday night 6:00pm service in the building that seats 150. I was preaching at the evening Sunday service. The service was video recorded and live streamed over the internet. Once again, in an amazing way the Holy Spirit got ahold of that service and many many were on their knees at the altar and up the aisles seeking the Lord with tears.
