This week a short term missions team joined us from an
organization called Castillo del Rey (translation: Kings Castle). Castillo del
Rey is a children’s ministry organization in Latin America. The six people who
joined us were working through Master’s Commission, a three year program to
become pastors or missionaries. They were partnered with Castillo del Rey for
practical mission experience. David was from Ecuador; Ricardo, William and
Idixia were from Nicaragua; Lucy and Karen were from here in El Salvador.
Castillo del Rey and Team Wreckonciled spent the week
together. In the mornings we would do door to door evangelism. Karen spoke
fluent English, so we split into two groups, with Emily and Karen each
translating for one group. It was interesting. Some people were really
receptive, invited us in, and ended up praying with us before we left. I’m
excited to see if I recognize any new people today in church. Of course, going
door to door there were also people who shut the door on our face. But for the
people who really responded to the message, it was worth the effort to go find
them.
In the afternoons, we went to a nearby, tiny village
called Santa Cruz. Each day we would do a different activity, but each day
would close with some sort of gospel presentation.
On Monday afternoon we went door to door, but this time
not particularly for Evangelism. We knocked on doors asking if anybody would
like some help around the house. Cleaning, fixing something, whatever it was
they wanted help with. Afterwards we invited all the children in the village to
a children’s service. The King’s Castle group does this on a regular basis, so
they had skits and music and a message ready to go.
On Tuesday afternoon we held a soccer tournament for the
entire community. Wednesday was a Children’s Festival, so all the King’s Castle
people dressed as clowns, and we did games, and dances, and short Bible
studies. Thursday we had a movie night, where we showed a Christian evangelical
movie to the community
.
Friday was “Freedom Night”. We started off with a break-dancing
competition (side note: having the gringos judge the contest increases the
number of spectators, but when none of the gringos know anything about
break-dancing, the final decision may not be completely valid). After that, all
10 missionaries that were there that day did 2 choreographed dances/dramas.
From there, Freedom Night continued with Joel’s testimony, Tiffany speaking,
and with a couple of demonstrations of God’s power, part of which involved
ripping a phone book in half.
Our last day with King’s Castle, we did a youth revival
retreat for the youth of the church we are working with this month in San
Rafael Cedros. This was a full day of games, worship, speakers, food….pretty
much what usually goes down at a youth retreat.
I was one of the speakers at the retreat. The verse the
asked me to speak on was 2 Chronicles 16:9, which is about revival. Before I
started, our team preformed the “Everything” Skit. If you have never seen this
skit before, go watch it now on YouTube. It’s a skit to the song “Eveyrthing”
by Lifehouse. You’re back? Finished? Good. Okay. So we started off with that
skit, and from there I started to speak about committing your heart to God.
I think the whole youth retreat went pretty well. It was a little
sad that our bonfire got rained out, but since it is rain season it wasn’t that
surprising. I hadn’t realized until I was there, though, how much I missed working with youth. We’ve done a lot of children’s ministry so far, but not a lot of youth ministry. And I was reminded that youth is where my heart lies.
This week was a lot of fun. I really felt like this is
exactly where God wanted me to be this month. Working with another group of
missionaries from a very different background was really interesting, and I
think each group learned a lot from the other. I’m going to miss several people
from the Castillo del Rey team, but I’m excited to hear their stories as they
continue studying to become full time missionaries and pastors.
