Leaving Medellín, Colombia, was quite hard. My whole squad grew very attached to the ministry at Ciudad Refugio. This ministry will forever be close to my heart!!
Every Wednesday, we rotated through groups of my squad mates that got to go to one special part of Ciudad Refugio’s ministry, called aguapanela.
After church on Wednesday evening, 10-15 of us would put on bright orange vests and load up in a van with members of the foundation, a jug of aguapanela- a colombian special drink which is essentially sweetened water- and rolls of bread in a large trash bag. for the 10 minute drive, we would sing worship in english and spanish and pray, remembering the goodness of the Lord.
And then, I will never forget the view of turning the corner to the street once we arrived for the first time. the van turns the corner and instantly, you see 150-200 people in homelessness. People are shouting, sleeping, selling drugs, injecting drugs, downing bottles of alcohol, wandering around. You see it all imagined, truly. Darkness is so heavy on this street, you can feel the weight of spiritual warfare.
We pray and set up the aguapanela and bread station. A couple stay back to pass out the food, and the rest go up and down the street telling people to grab some food and to pray with people.
The last Wednesday in Medellín, I got to go around with my new friend and translator, Alejandra. We talked to a sweet 17 year old girl, Caroline and got to pray for her. My heart broke for her. We walked some more and prayed for another man and his friend as they were curled up on the ground. He didn’t want much to do with us, but Alejandra kept singing and praying over him. She was such an example to me as she kept parading up and down the streets singing worship and calling out to the Lord. It was this night that I realized how powerful it is to simply speak the Lord’s name over darkness and to invite His presence into life with you. Calling out over the dark spiritual warfare that my God is the God of Medellín and He is powerful was all I could do in these moments, but man is that powerful in itself. I left these streets with a heavy heart, grieving the darkness of the world and what our sins have done to it. I also left completely confident and hopeful for the Lord to use this ministry to break chains of addiction and warfare.
He is a God of light and power, and sometimes the best thing we can do is invite His power into a situation.
