Colombia 9-2013 Day 2

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.

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