Yesterday marked two weeks of being in Medellin, Colombia! As I mentioned in my last blog my team and I are serving and living at Cuidad Refugio. It is an addiction recovery center that also houses homeless at night, holds church services, provides 3 meals a day, has daily women and men Bible studies, and endless actives for children. As you can imagine it is a busy non stop 5 story building! The past two weeks have flown by so fast but have left us with lifetime memories already! We have a pretty set schedule of what we do everyday and only changes if you have kitchen duty for the week. Kitchen duty consists of getting up at 5:30am to have a Bible study with the women in the recovery program, then basically we spend the whole morning until noon helping them cook and prepare food. You would be surprised how much energy the kitchen can take out of you (I now have a lot of sympathy for my mom)! The women are literally so incredible and full of knowledge! Although they love making fun of me for only knowing basic Spanish… they also enjoy teaching me but laugh so hard at how badly I pronounce the words. Almost everyday we attend their Bible Study in the afternoon, however my favorite time we spend together are at the Friday afternoon outings. The first week we all played soccer which was for sure one of my favorite memories yet! Then last week we went to the The Botanical Garden. It started to rain and that lead to us all playing tag… who knew playing tag with a bunch of ladies above the age of 20 could be so FUN!
The first week we were here I got the opportunity to spend time at an elderly home! I was unsure going into it, but ended the day dancing and laughing with some amazing men and women! The first hour was pretty awkward because out of the four of us girls only one knew Spanish and they asked us to sing songs. We knew one song in Spanish but then found ourselves singing “feliz navidad” after we realized how humiliating we looked we quickly stopped and just started dancing with them, safe to say they were more happy with that anyways haha! They loved holding our hands, giving hugs and kisses on the cheeks!
Saturdays are very packed for us. We spend our whole day loving on kids and sharing the Gospel with them! This weekend half of my squad went to an internally displaced community where we put on classes for the kids there. My friend Lia and I had the opportunity to speak to the High School aged kids about scripture and after play games with them! Then on Saturday night we helped with the youth group at Ciudad Refugio!
A few times a week we have “team time” which is where we get together and debrief the day or have a Bible lesson. This week our leaders asked us “What is something God has taught you guys this past week?” Well… I had a clear answer to that question. Going into this mission trip I expected to be loving on kids and creating amazing bonds with the adults here since that is what I experienced when I went to Africa. However, during the first day of kitchen duty we were asked to scrub the black off of the pans then to clean the walls and windows and after we were done they told us to clean them again… I was pretty discouraged from this because I imagined actually cooking with the women to create that bond I imagined. However as I went to bed that night I realized that spreading God’s word and love doesn’t have to be through all the “easy” things. But it can be through the gross stuff that I simply wouldn’t choose to do! The next three days I made it priority to have a happy, loving heart no matter what we did in the kitchen. I am not sure I will be able to eat another carrot after we skinned what felt like a million… but I will forever be thankful for those four days spent in the kitchen with some of my favorite people in Colombia! Oh and I can’t forget to mention that those pans were so clean you could see yourself in them!!
Hopefully this gave you a small glimpse of what our days look like as missionaries at Cuidad Refugo. Thank you all again for all the support!! It means the world to me!!
Love,
Roo
