Let me tell you about one of the experiences that we have had this week – the work that we do on Thursdays.
The ministries from Thursdays to Saturdays are spent working as a whole group of 60+ of us, whilst Mondays to Wednesdays are done in groups of two WR teams at a time. So Thursdays we go into a place called INFA (still trying to find out what that stands for) which is a, I guess, correctional facility for girls who have been pulled from the streets for too much violence or other infractions. Having them all in one place is somewhat risky I would think but we go in to love on them and share our lives with them.
Our programme, planned and prepared for earlier in the week and that morning, includes a number of stations that they can partake in during the two hours we are with them, including: painting nails; doing hair; exercise/dance; games and crafts. (There is also a special needs ward and a baby ward that a number of our group go to during that time.)
We spent the first few minutes introducing ourselves/being introduced and some of our group performed a step routine* before sending everyone out as they decided to different stations. That was an hour and a half roughly and during that time, through broken Spanish, I taught and played Checkers with a girl.
There was one hiccup though and it occurred in the middle of the ‘stations’ time. We don’t know exactly what caused it, we can only assume that a person from one group was disrespecting someone from another group, but a bunch of half a dozen girls came in from another room and started beating on one girl. A bunch of us jumped in to separate them all and the offending party was taken away, although a bunch of the girls were shaken up by it all and the victim was obviously somewhat hurt (nothing too serious).
Later, once it had all calmed down and the stations had finished, the rest of the girls all came back together and one of our team shared her testimony. Her testimony connected with a number of the girls as she shared about her experiences with alcohol, using guys to try and get self-worth and even of a time she was raped. She shared about how God had come into her life and drastically changed her and turned it all around, and afterwards, whilst two of our group played some worship songs in Spanish, some of our girls were able to pray with some of those that wanted them to.
Please pray for this group as we go in consistently, unlike many in their lives who have written them off, and do our best to love them and show them Jesus. We are hoping that there won’t be any more fights but that there will be more redemption.
*Once we have better internet, and I have gathered some, I plan on going back and adding in video of the step routine (you can always YouTube ‘step routines’ to see the kind of things that they are) as well as populating these blogs with some photos.
