It’s been about 10 days now that I’ve been on the World Race doing ministry in Medellin, Colombia and for the first week pretty much the only part of Colombia that I’d seen was the view from the roof of the ministry that we are living and working at. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing and beautiful view (see below), but when I pictured myself traveling South America for a year I thought that I’d be exploring places and seeing new sights, not stuck in one place watching the rest of the world bustling around outside. I felt trapped, caged, and a little bit angry. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I love the outdoors and not just hiking mountains or cascading rivers but even the little joys like taking walks, sitting in a park, or eating dinner outside. It felt like a mean joke.
Well it wasn’t a joke, it was actually the point. You see, the first week we were treated as if we were part of the ministry’s drug/alcohol rehab program and part of that is the women in the program are not allowed to leave the building, unless chaperoned and have been in the program for a certain amount of time. The point of this is so that they aren’t distracted by the outside world, so as not to return and can focus on strengthening their spiritual life. So the four of us ladies on my team have been doing life with the women who are in this year long program of giving everything to the Lord. This means we slept in the same rooms with them and woke up at 5:30am every morning, cleaned, shared meals, peeled potatoes for 10 hours, did devotionals, and tried to communicate through broken Spanish. Well it turns out that the Lord knows what he’s doing, because even through the mundane tasks and the broken Spanish we learned to laugh together, hear each other’s stories, and love each other. Being “trapped” forced me to get to know these amazing women, my awesome team mates, and the Lord. Without the normal distractions that life brings, I was able to see His glory in small acts of service and what intentionality can bring into life.
I have since “graduated” the program and gotten the freedom to explore Medellin, but I still love the time I get to spend with those women. I love learning bits and pieces of their lives everyday, joking and laughing with them, and praying while growing together in our faith. The ministry here is doing amazing things and I feel privileged to be a part of it.
