After lots of hard goodbyes and lots of time spent in the airport, we finally landed in Medellin, Colombia. The plan was that we would all spend that first night in Medellin together and then the teams would head their separate ways as they travelled to their different assigned ministry sites. In my mind, Medellin was just the in between before the real thing, just like I kept thinking of my time last semester as just the in between before going on the world race.
And then my team’s travels to Planeta Rica got delayed for a couple more days. And even though I kept viewing my time in Medellin as just another waiting period before my actual world race would finally begin and we were only there for 4 little days while we were waiting for our ministry host in Planeta Rica to get back from vacation with his family and I spent the better part of my first 2 days there sleeping to make up for the sleep that I didn’t get during our travel day, just like God used what I had dubbed as just the in between last semester to do so much more in my life than just wait around, God sure did use my time in Medellin to rock my world in all the best ways.
During our short but impactful time in Medellin, we stayed at a ministry called Ciudad Refugio. What on the outside looked like just a simple building with a little bakery attached and a cool rooftop with an awesome view, turned out to be a structure strategically designed to meet many of the needs of the surrounding community. Not only did this building serve as a homeless shelter, but also as a church, a drug rehabilitation center for both men and women, a school, and a shelter for internally displaced people. And trust me, God’s fingerprints are all over that place. As soon as you step inside, you can’t help but say, “Wow! God is on the move here!”
Drinking yummy fresh fruit juice with every meal and exploring the botanical gardens and playing soccer on the rooftop with the boys and getting to worship and praise God in a language that I barely know with some of the people in their drug rehabilitation program and getting to have cool conversations with the German volunteers that are serving there and coloring with the children at one of their feeding programs and playing silly games with the children at youth group are just some of the highlights from our little stay at Ciudad Refugio. But the thing that tugged on my heart the most wasn’t something that we did or something that we saw, but something that one of the men that helps run the ministry, Harry, said to us while he was giving us a tour of the facility. He said, “We like to say that the people that come into our program here are one step away from Hell.” And I was so quick to agree and be so very thankful that a place like this exists. Like yeah, you’re right man, these people are addicted to drugs, knocking on death’s door, life spiraling out of control, barely hanging on, consumed by darkness, trapped and desperately searching for any way out and then you give them a place and the space for God to find them in the middle of the mess and be transformed from the inside out by His incredible love. And that’s when it hit me-that was me too, I was one once just one little step away from Hell. I was right there in that same spot, living life for the world, finding it draining and unsatisfying, thinking there must be something more than this-and then God came crashing in, the Life of the party, and made my story go from just average to miraculous because He took me, something that was once dead, and brought me to Life! So yeah maybe before that I was always just one step away from Hell, but I was also just one step away from salvation, and they are too! And that’s something to be thankful for! Praying that God’s love continues to find people one step away from Hell at Ciudad Refugio, continues to pull them out of the pit of destruction and set them onto the rock of salvation.
