Fifth Trip June, 2010 Day 1

Oh! It was so good to be back today with all of our little friends at Ciudad De La Nina (City of the Girl) Orphanage in Madrid. So many hugs, so many smiles, and a few tears as we were reunited once again. This is my fifth trip to Bogota in the last twelve months and I rejoice and praise the Lord that He has chosen me and my family to participate in His work with the orphans of Colombia. We have a wonderful team that God has once again hand picked for this particular trip. It is a special joy for me to have my sweet wife of twenty five years, Lisa, and my sixteen year old daughter, Brooke, with me as well. Our day started with breakfast and delicious Colombian coffee. Before we boarded the bus for the orphanage I was blessed to be able to give a devotion for the team. This whole week I will be exploring with the team in these devotions some different aspects of Jesus approach to ministry and serving people. Today we explored the fact that Jesus “saw” and then felt compassion. As I have shared in my last four posts on Compassion, over twenty times in the New Testament it says that Jesus “saw” someone and then felt and acted. So today I shared with the team that Jesus wants to relive His life in each of us and so when we go to the orphanage we need to give Him our eyes and let Him “see” through us the needs of these dear children and then we will feel His heart and know His will for us and why we are here.

First thing after we arrived, one hundred and sixty girls gave a presentation for us with some dances and some songs and then I was privileged to share the gospel with them. I told them how that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had in eternity past enjoyed the supreme love and supreme happiness of their perfect relationship in perfect holiness and how that they wanted to share that wonderful love and happiness and holiness with someone else and so they created man and woman to walk together with in the garden in the cool of the day. But man and woman wanted more than just a childlike relationship with God. Their pride and lust lead them to try life on their own without God and this painful, sinful, corrupt world is the result. But God was not satisfied to let man and woman and their offspring go their own way and so the Father sent the Son to become one of them and to live their life and to feel their pain and to give His life to undo the damage that their pride and lust had done and purchase them back to Himself so that once again they could join in that beautiful familial relationship of love and happiness between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now by faith when we believe and confess with our mouth this wonderful gift we are restored to that childlike relationship with our loving Heavenly Father and we are left here for now to share His love with those around us and one day in Heaven we will spend the rest of eternity enjoying that supreme love and supreme happiness and supreme holiness as one big beautiful blood bought family. I then invited them to pray with me and ask the Father to restore them through the death of Jesus back to the family of God.

We spent the rest of the day visiting and taking photos and having a wonderful time. It was rainy today so we spent most of our time inside. At one point Shoby John, one of my dear friends on our team came up and said, “Hey, let’s sing” so several of us gathered around and sang praise and worship songs until our voices gave out. The Colombian girls loved it! It was so cute to see them stand there soaking up the multipart harmonies and the passion of our worship as we lifted our voices to the Lord. After every song they would say, “Mas, mas” (more, more) It was a day to be remembered forever. We will go back there tomorrow for a big cook out and more fun and games. Thank you for your prayers and support.