hey friends! i wanted to write a quick blog on what exactly we’ll be doing for ministry now that we’ve had a couple weeks to settle in :))
for the next two months, d squad is going to be working with The Hope Project (also know as Til He Returns in the US) in San José. The Hope Project is a poverty alleviation ministry started by Micah and Melissa that focuses on long-term development of a community rather than short-term relief work (useful after a natural disaster or crisis but not helpful for long-term ministry). last week we had a lot of training from Melissa on what it looked like to do short-term missions well (a good book on this is When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett!). We also learned a lot about The Hope Project’s vision and mission in their community.
this week we were trained on how to work more specifically with the different programs The Hope Project has, like the Refuge (their pregnancy center), House of Raw (their dance studio), and English Club, to name a few. Micah and Melissa are really passionate about helping people discover their gifts and using them to better serve the kingdom, so we also had a lot of time to brainstorm ways we could help out more around THP in our specific giftings (more on that a little later!)
our squad has around 30 people, so in order to better serve THP, half of us go to ministry in the mornings and the other half goes in the afternoon. this first week, my team, Stride, served in the afternoons with Agape and Shathal, while Align and Kenosis (our only boys team) served in the mornings. ministry for our three girls’ teams looked like getting the building ready for House of Raw classes starting at 4, sometimes participating in the dance classes, and going into downtown San José to hand out English Club flyers and evangelize. the morning group also did evangelism, as well as sorting donated baby clothes for the Refuge, and cleaning the building in between events.
our lovely driver Alfredo drives each group 30 minutes in San José traffic to get us to The Hope Project in the heart of the city, so there’s a little bit of overlap each day when he brings the afternoon group to take over from the morning group. during this time, we’ve had discipleship teachings from Micah, one of the founders of THP, as well as Spanish class with Jezie, a G42 intern living at the AIM base with us, and QuiQue, an ambassador with THP who also heads up their addictions counseling.
one of my favorite parts of this week was getting to take pictures and videos of a dance class that my squadmates were a part of so that THP would have promotional content for their website and social media. if you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you know that the Lord has recently given me a BIG heart for storytelling and using my creative gifts to serve Him, so this was AMAZING!! another highlight was getting to brainstorm ways we could do more storytelling/creative ideas for the programs THP has. some ideas we came up with were things like putting on an art show with art from the Coffee and Art program, making video testimonies of women from Waves of Grace (a program that teaches underprivileged women how to make bracelets as well as how to sell them), and teaching a product photography class to the Business Club. the best part is how it’s only the first week of serving here, and the staff has already encouraged us so much in our individual passions and gifts to use in ministry.
all in all, it’s been kinda chaotic getting used to a new schedule and ministry that we’ve never worked with, but it’s also been an amazing experience getting to learn from Micah and Melissa and the rest of the staff at THP. i can’t wait to share more about the kingdom work going on here in San José!!
if you want to learn more about Til He Returns/The Hope Project, here’s their website: https://www.tilhereturns.com/
