Hello friends and supporters!
I thought I would write a blog to give you an update of my day to day life here in Medellin. I am loving the city and its people. The men and women that are in the rehab program here are kept separate, therefore the men and women on our team are doing different things throughout the day.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday our schedule is roughly the same:
7:00 am – Prayer and Bible study with the men in the program
8:00-8:15 – Breakfast consisting of arepas, eggs, and hot chocolate, very good.
8:15-11:30ish – Daily chores. First, we go to a grocery store to gather the fruit and vegetables they have taken off the shelf due to them being expired, or had blemishes, etc. The Colombian definition of acceptable and the US version are very different, nothing goes to waste here. The foundation gets them for free and the grocery store gets to write it off. After we take them back, the men trim them up and prepare them for the meals for the day. Here is a picture of them doing this:
12:30-12:45 – Lunch. This is the biggest meal of the day. Usually rice, a small salad, fried plantains, a meat, and a side of soup with potatoes. To drink is always fresh squeezed fruit of some kind, it is fantastic. We have about 15 minutes to shovel it all down before the women come eat, so we must be gone when they get there.
1:00-2:00 – Bible class with the men
2:00 – On Mondays and Thursday we go to the local park to play futbol
5:45 – Dinner. Usually the same thing we had for lunch, just a smaller portion.
6:00 – On Wednesday we have a church service, then go out into the street to minister to the homeless and drug additcs and hand out bread and aguapanela. **I’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post. Other days we get ready for the homeless intake at 7. Every night at 7 the homeless start to line up outside to stay the night. They come in and give their name, and get a cup of sugar water (aguapanela), which is very popular here. They are then searched for drugs and weapons. After that, they are given a mat to sleep on for the night.
8:00-11ish – The evenings are when we have time with our team to talk about what happened that day, pray, and unwind.
Tuesday and Thursday we are off because our weekends are filled with Vacation Bible School, watching and playing with the kids, English classes, and whatever else is going on, it varies. For VBS, we usually play games with the kids to start, then a lesson and a skit. Afterwards, the kids get donuts and juice.
The kids at VBS:
The kids love to jump on your back and yell Correr! (run!)
Here is a picture of the guys at a local castle on one of our off days:
Sunday we have church and one of the men at the foundation translates for us. The rest of the afternoon is always up in the air so we step in and help with whatever we can.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I am loving it so far and I can’t wait to see what Ecuador has for us!
