Ciudad Refugio – The foundation where we are staying
I’ve never kept a journal before starting the race, but since leaving, I’ve kept an entry of what’s been happening each and every day. I mostly include what ministry looks like for the day, but also add different things I learn and experiences I won’t want to leave forgotten. I hope to stay consistent with daily entries throughout the entire race, because I think it will definitely be worth all the ink and extra bit of time each day! I thought for this blog it would be neat to share what a few days in my week look like here in the city of Medellin. This month, we’re given Mondays off for our adventure days to get out and explore our surrounding culture and have some fun. Tuesdays are our designated Sabbath day for us to rest in the Lord and spend time with Him. A lot of times we will help out with the church service, Sunday school, or other ministry activities on Sundays, so we are given another day to designate as our Sabbath with the Lord. This leaves the planned ministry week to start on Wednesday. I know, it may sound like a bit of a slack schedule, but when these days are through, I fall right to sleep, despite sleeping on my 2 inch thick sleeping pad in a noisy “hallway room” with a curtain wall. So here we go! I will elaborate on these journal entries a bit and give some extra context for the purpose of this blog.
Wednesday – October 23
It was a busy day packed with ministry. Lots of good things along with some tough things to try to wrap myself around as well. We started the day off as usual with breakfast down in the bakery for the whole squad. Following the morning croissant and coffee, our teams split up to our different assignments. The girls on the team worked on sorting clothes donations and putting together outfit packages to give to families up on the mountainside in the impoverished neighborhood, Manantialles. My fellow guy teammate Ike and myself worked on putting together supplies bags that will also be taken up to these families in Manantialles. The families that will receive these bags send their children to the foundations weekend kids camps and other functions up on the other mountain campus. We helped put together 50 bags that included a large bag of rice, a couple bags of different kinds of beans, noodles, a bottle of cooking oil, some canned fish, a type of sugar, 2lbs of potatoes, 10 mandarinas, and a roll of toilet paper. They were loaded when we were finished! We got done in time to meet back up with the squad for lunch in the kitchen.
After a little lunch break, our team of 6 started the trek down to the local school for English club with Julia, one of the bilingual volunteers at the foundation. Most of the students at English club could already speak some decent English, as they had been learning in school. We practiced a few conversational exercises with them and had fun going around the circle, creating a story together from the story prompts we had to choose from. I worked mostly with a 7th grade girl, Michelle, and I was thankful that her English was much better than my Spanish! I had fun with her and I think all the students enjoyed the opportunity to converse with a native English speaker. (Even with a Wisconsin accent)!
We arrived back at the foundation with a little bit of down time to hang out together before dinner. The Wednesday evening 6 o’clock church service on the main floor followed after dinner. Pastor Douglas talked about the hardships inside of Medellin and the increasing numbers of drug users and people living out on the streets. He admitted that he had asked God why He had led him into a place of so much struggle and so many hardships. He related to the story of Moses leading the stubborn Israelites to their promised land. In the end, he left these words stuck in my mind, “What is impossible for me is possible for God.” He prayed for real encounters and a relationship with God for the men in the rehab program and for all of us.
Following the evening church service, myself and about a dozen other racers took the opportunity to join in with the Wednesday night street ministry they call agua panella. The foundation brings bread rolls and a type of sugar water out to people on the streets in an extremely dark area referred to as “the Bronx”. This area is maybe 3 or 4 city blocks in size and the streets that lead to it are barricaded with police enforcement around the perimeter. Basically, the police turn a blind eye to drug usage inside the Bronx. They feel if they can contain addicted drug users on the street into one area, at least they aren’t wandering throughout the rest of the city. People under the influence must stay inside the perimeters. Hundreds of people can be found living out on these streets. I’ve never experienced drugs of these sorts, but while walking through the Bronx, there were people all over the place smoking crack pipes, snorting cocaine, and shooting heroin into their arms. They just chill on the street, constantly getting high and minding their own. Although it doesn’t really appear to be much of a violent or very dangerous space, all of us volunteers wore orange vests for safety and to stay together. Some of the volunteers handed out the bread and water in one location, and I was part of the group that went out to meet with people.
It’s shocking that this place is even a reality, but God had a divine appointment waiting for me with a man sitting on the sidewalk named George. He called out to this 6’5” dutch guy, “Hey man what’s goin on? What are you doing out here?”. I was glad to hear English after not being able to understand the language and needing a translator so much this month! I began to ask him about himself and his story, where he was from and how he knew English. He was a Medellin native but actually spent more than 20 years of his life in the states. He shared about his highs in life of owning his own barber shop and his current struggles of wanting to be free from his addictions and getting off the streets. We sat and talked for probably 20 minutes until it was time for our group to go. I was so thankful for our conversation and before I left, I was able to give him a flyer with information about staying at the foundation. I told him that I saw a lot of good in him and that I believed he could overcome the addiction he was facing. I put my arm around Him and prayed that he would know his worth and how much the Lord loves him. He was thankful for my prayer and asked that I would continue to pray for him. I do hope he shows up at the foundation and finds some help so he’s not left to fight his battle alone.
It makes me angry that the devil is telling all these people in the Bronx lies about themselves and their worth to the point that they degrade their bodies and just don’t feel anything anymore. They’re left feeling dead inside, and miss the fact they are so sought after to be children of a perfect loving father. I pray that each of them would quit believing in those lies from the devil, and begin to recognize their true identity in the Lord and their value to Him.
Thursday – October 24
This morning, we loaded up with supply bags to take up the mountainside to the families in Manantialles. We climbed into the cab and the covered truck bed of the foundations pickup. It takes about 30 minutes to get up there with the traffic on the tight roads. The streets up on the mountain are simply rocks and dirt, and the cinder block houses are not much either. Upon arrival, we split up into smaller groups of 3 or four people and paired up with a local volunteer/ translator. We were assigned specific houses to stop at and visit with while dropping off the supply bags. In most cases, only the mother of the home was there at the time, sometimes with some younger children. In cases where the father was present, he was at work, and the school aged children were in school. They were each so grateful for the supplies bags that we were able to give to them. There were some big smiles and even some tears of joy. It was very cool to be a little part of this initiative from the foundation. We also stayed to visit with them for a bit and prayed for the families before we left.
We arrived back at the foundation for lunch and made in back in time for the Thursday afternoon soccer game with the guys in the program. We walked with them down to the local soccer field, which consists of sand/dirt ground rather than green grass. The games with them are so much fun, but halfway through this match, it began to downpour! Nobody seemed to care, and the game carried on throughout the rain. It came down for probably 20 minutes. We were all drenched and filthy, but having even more fun than before the rain! Puddles in the field and slippery ground added some new elements to the game! I ended up with a few goals and on the walk home, we stopped at a car wash to hose ourselves down. That was good for a few laughs. Our shoes ended up on the window sills to dry out, but it was all worth getting dirty.
We cleaned up and gathered back together for the men’s afternoon bible class at 4. They are continuing their progress through the book of Proverbs. Each of us shared our favorite verse from the proverb of the day and why we chose it. I then shared a message about motivation for service in God’s kingdom that I had previously shared with the Saturday night youth group. Scott, a missionary at the foundation from Tennessee, was with us and translated for Ike and I.
After dinner, we met back up with the girls on the team for team time. Our squad leader Adria shared some insight on what it means to have a mind like Christ. We shared about our days, gave feedback within our team and spoke a few words of encouragement into each other. A great end to a great day.
Friday – October 25
Today, our team was scheduled to make a trip to a nearby elderly home to visit and sing some songs, along with another trip to the school for English club in the afternoon. After a conversation with the squad leaders and my fellow logistics coordinator, Em, we decided that it was best for Em and myself to take the day away from scheduled ministry to nail down our logistics plan to get the squad moved to the end of the month debrief that we’ll be having in our next country, Ecuador. As logistics coordinators, we have the responsibility of getting our wonderful squad of 25 moved from country to country, as well as finding a place to stay for the few 3 or 4 day “squad debriefs” that take place throughout the year. Em and I had a few different plans for transportation, but unfortunately our best option of hiring a private bus to take us straight through to our destination was out of budget and fell through. So we went off on an adventure to the bus station and ended up purchasing tickets for everyone on public transport buses. The squad will be travelling on 3 different buses over roughly 30 hours! We did manage to get a hostel booked for a night along the way between bus transfers to break up the riding time so that’s a plus at least. Luckily, the café/bakery down in the front of the foundation is a great place for research on the laptop with a donut and a coke in a glass bottle for thinking fuel!
By the time we got everything squared away and our purchases receipted online, it was nearly time to meet back up with the rest of the squad for dinner. Rice and beans on the menu once again! It gets a little old after awhile, but all in all the food we get here is not bad so I’ll count it as a blessing! We ended the night with some more team time, reflecting on the day and catching up with how each of us are doing along with some good conversations.
I was initially going to include Saturday and Sunday into this blog entry, but I feel like I’m writing a college essay already and this thing is getting long! So in short, Saturday included another trip up to Manantialles to deliver supply bags we had left over, the homeless men’s evening church service at the foundation where my teammate Hayden shared the message, as well as youth group in the evening. Sunday included the morning church service, splitting up to help out with the Sunday school classes, going through something we call “journey markers” with the team, and writing this blog!
It’s hard to believe that Tuesday morning (the 29th) we’ll be saying goodbye to Ciudad Refugio and our month #1 in Colombia will be over already! The first few days here at the foundation were a whole lot of adjustment for me. I was not used to the big metropolitan, people everywhere, constant noise both from the street and from within the foundation, cold showers in a tiny bathroom, a new language, a new culture. However, I must say this place has grown on me and I’ll miss these guys from the rehab program that have become my friends. I won’t soon forget all the big smiles, fist bumps, and little Spanish greetings from them throughout my time here. They have truly been a testimony to me about the ways that the Lord can transform anyone. These guys have come from addiction and dark places in their lives, but have been redeemed and given the joy of a new life through the glory of the Lord! What a testimony to what the Lord can do!
Overall, it’s been a great month here in Colombia. I’ve found growth in my personal relationship with the Lord through increased time spent seeking Him on our Sabbath days, in the mornings and evenings. I’ve found growth in community, both through building relationships with my squad and with the men here. I’ve found growth in the mission of bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth here through loving on kids in the vbs programs, sharing with George on the streets of the Bronx, and the opportunity to help families out with supply bags from the foundation. As much as I love all my friends and family back home, I am happy for the opportunity to continue on with the journey ahead. My team gets to partner with a great ministry next month and I’m looking forward to Ecuador, but this blog is long enough so I’ll share that in the next one!
Thank you all so much for your continued prayers and encouragement!
Views from the rooftop of the foundation!
