Hey, friends and family! First of all, I am alive and safe!!
This first week of the World Race has been one to remember. I am absolutely in love with everything and many things have pleasantly surprised me, like how well my team gets along. While I still feel like I am living with people I barely know, we are all so willing to work together to accomplish a goal and living with these girls is wonderful. Please pray our team continues to bond and that we are able to serve our host family well.
I cannot wait for my videos to upload to YouTube so that you can see everything that I’m talking about! Please pray for some faster uploading speed, because as it is I am sitting in a cafe that we can only go to once a week and after an hour my video is seven percent uploaded. I have already made five videos in one week, so rest assured that once I get to some good wifi you will have many more updates. That being the case, make sure to check my YouTube page as well as this blog if you want to make sure you don’t miss an update!
Since the videos are a little hard to upload right now, I want to tell you a little about what we are doing so you are not in the dark. Our ministry is at the Alex Rocha Foundation. We live in Alex’s house with his family and him and we are only allowed to leave with a local adult. We are in the “mouth of the lion,” in one of the most dangerous parts of Colombia. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see the tourist side of Cartagena like where I am in the Old City right now in comparison to the slums where we actually live. There is music playing 24/7, but I love it and it hasn’t kept me from sleeping. We sleep on the ground with our sleeping pads, we brush our teeth with bottled water, we have been blessed with air conditioning in our room as a respite from the scalding heat right outside of it, we cook for ourselves, and we hang our clothes out to dry after we rent a washing machine once a week. While I haven’t had a hard time sleeping, I know some of my teammates have because of the music and, well, cockroaches. I have had the hardest time with the amount of food we are eating. Fundraising is a very strict budget that does not include swimmer diets. I have been getting lightheaded every time I stand up. We are getting better at shopping with our budget, but I have been trying to discern the line between leaning into hunger and learning to be content in all circumstances versus starving and being unhealthy. Please pray for some good rest and fulfilling food!
Alex and his wife, Merci, are two amazing followers of Christ. He is a tour guide during the day and then teaches English classes to the community for free. He also provides baseball games for the kids in the community, break dancing events, and other activities at least three times a week. Many people in this community have the opinion that church is boring, so Alex meets them where they are. He has told us that if we weren’t out playing baseball with the kids, they would be fighting. The two sides of a street used to war with each other, but it is better now. Nonetheless, when 30 percent of the kids don’t go to school and the others only partially, they have a lot of free time to resort to animosity and fighting. Alex says Jesus would serve them this way. The first time we went to play baseball, some cops stopped us and yelled at Alex for bringing white people out here because “they’re all going to get robbed.” Alex turned to me and said they didn’t understand why he would bring us into the “mouth of the lion.” And he’s right. Even playing baseball, I saw kids twirling knives. We aren’t allowed to wear any jewelry, because people will come grab it off of us for fun.
Since we aren’t allowed to leave the house, we have tried to serve our community and Alex’s family the best we can. We clean the house every day, we washed Alex’s car once as a surprise, and we cleaned their yard this morning. In addition, everyone in the community passes through the street, and countless kids come up to our gate to talk to us at all hours of the day. They refer to us as “gringa Tera” and “gringa Sarah,” etc. They will ask for us by name and get us to come talk to them. One day it started raining and kids poured into the street to play soccer in the rain (wait until the video uploads! This was one of my favorite parts so far).
While this is by far the most dangerous place I’ve ever lived, and I certainly can’t hide the blue eyes and blonde hair that make me a target, I don’t feel unsafe. Alex is one of the most respected people you can imagine, and everyone knows what he is about and why he does what he does (to bring glory to Christ). We have a devotional with either Alex, Merci, or both every morning. Both of their testimonies are incredible, and I am hoping to share parts of them in videos to come. Please pray God guides me to the right stories so that I can encourage the body of Christ through the ministry of video.
Through all of this, God has been so faithful. I feel so incredibly used and I am so grateful to be here. I have not been overwhelmed with the language at all, and it is so amazing to me to be able to fully converse in Spanish and be a translator for my teammates (Hannah is the only other person on my team who speaks Spanish, so we translate 24/7). Merci even told me (not asked, mind you) that I am teaching Sunday school this Sunday in Spanish. I am going to share my testimony as Kaitlyn and Hannah perform a play behind me and then I will teach for 30 minutes about redemption! Please pray for my preparation and that God speaks through me on Sunday!
That being said, I have felt so needed and useful, but I have also felt very attacked because I feel like it is so obvious that God has me here for a big purpose. Within the first five days I had residual shoulder pain like I haven’t had since I quit swimming (it went away with prayer), I got a stomach bug from undercooked chicken, I had ant bites covering my feet, mosquito bites, I busted my head open at launch and almost needed stitches, I cut my finger so badly reaching in my bag for a razor that it wouldn’t stop bleeding for hours, and I got stung by a wasp during baseball (Alex said wasps don’t even exist in Cartagena). Go figure. I’m a klutz, but I’m not THAT bad. Please pray God continues to work through me and that I am able to stand firm with the help of my teammates and continue to walk in all that God wants me to do and be here. Also, even though we have been safe every day, I am not disillusioned to think we are living in a safe environment. Please pray for God’s continued protection and our continued wise decision-making.
One thing we have been amazed and humbled by so far is the gratitude of Alex and his wife. When they pray, 90 percent of their prayers are thanksgiving and praise to God, while only 10 percent are asking for something. I feel like 90% of my prayers are asking and 10 percent are gratitude. Please pray for continued changing of perspectives. Also, please pray for Alex, Merci, and their six children: Caroline, Karen, Jesus, Juan David, Alexander, and Cristian. Alex does so much for his family and the community, but he comes home exhausted. Please pray that he is encouraged by us, that he can rest, and that God gives him continued restitution every day. Pray for Merci, that she is able to find rest and continue to serve her family. Pray that Alex and Merci are able to spend more time together.
Please pray for this community, that God would restore people’s vision of what and who the church really is, that He would touch their hearts and prepare the way, and that God would move mountains in Cartagena. Pray that others would know us by the way we love each other.
Sorry that this post is a little scattered, but I promise once I get the videos uploaded things will make a little more sense! I hope it helped you get a glimpse of what is going on in our lives and how you can be praying for us. I love you all and I am so grateful for your continued support, even though I can only connect to you once a week! God is moving, God is good, He is active, and He is redeeming all things for His glory!
May God bless you as you read this,
Tera
Kaitlyn and Chrissy playing with the kids in the rain in the street right outside our house.
Me with some of the girls in church yesterday. They love playing with my hair.
Our off days are Mondays and Fridays. We designate Fridays as “fun fridays” and do something more adventurous those days. Mondays are our “Sabbaths” and we rest, do laundry, and try to get to town to get to Wifi to talk to you all. This photo is from a volcano we went to on Friday. Props of having a tour guide as your host. Don’t worry, I made a video about it once I can get it uploaded to YouTube!
