So what are we doing this month?
- Living on La Finca- “The Farm" and transforming it into a Christian Retreat Center by plastering, sanding, painting, building, raking, raking, burning, raking and cleaning.
- Ministering to and encouraging the local community, El Horno- teaching them to better their community without being the rich and pushy white people who come in, drop some money, and try to change things.
- Partnering with the community to determine what their greatest needs are, creating maps and written history of the area and posting both online and helping/teaching/assisting them to meet their greatest needs. In the morning we are also teaching English and doing a VBS
- Working with “the boys” and the community of Los Pinos, literally referred to by outsiders as “trash”, and of course, where my heart is.
- We have six boys (Henry, Christopher, Luis, Carlos, Josue and Fernando) who we are in constant contact with- loving them, feeding them, playing with them and teaching them about God’s love and how to be honorable men of God. Four of them are brothers and the other two are cousins and all of them live together in a two bedroom house without electricity- their mom lives at the local dump with nine men.
- Like most of the people in Los Pinos, most of the boys are addicted to paint thinner.
- Our group is doing VBS at Los Pinos (the same VBS as the El Horno group) where we are focusing on trust and teaching about Zacchaeus, Daniel and the lion den, David and Goliath and the Gospel.
- The first half of our time we will be sharing our testimonies and leading the lessons and during the second half we will be teaching and empowering the local kids to run the VBS- teaching the lessons, sharing their own testimonies and sharing the Gospel themselves.
- Our goal is for everything we do to be self sustained by the local communities so that they can continue everything when we are gone.
- “Let a generation not yet born praise the Lord because of our life’s work” –paraphrase of Psalm 102:18 by a pastor in North Carolina
Here are a few pictures from our ministry at Los Pinos yesterday
