Last Wednesday, my squad landed in San Salvador, where we split into our teams and went with our ministry hosts. My team’s contact is named Andrea, and we absolutely love her. She has a huge heart for the Lord and for the people in her costal town. She graduated from a college in Missouri a few years ago, so she understands American culture. Her father is the pastor of the church where we are staying.
The air is thick and heavy here. No matter how many times I shower, I have a mix of moisture, sweat, bug spray, sunscreen, and dirt on my skin. It has rained heavily almost every single night since we’ve been here, the drops violently echoing off of our tin roof, but I don’t mind. After living in a desert my whole life, the downpours and lightning shows are both breathtaking and alien.
The scenery is beautiful. It’s green, of course, but I’ve never seen such a variety of trees in one place. There are mountains, too, many of which are inactive volcanos. Numerous emaciated dogs and horses wander the alleys. (There used to be a lot of chickens, too, but we heard some gunshots the other day, and…let’s just say that we haven’t seen as many since.) The beach is the most gorgeous one that I’ve seen, covered in rocks and dark sand, but it’s not much fun to actually swim in the ocean. The gigantic, powerful waves easily push us into the rocks and it’s hard to balance because of how slippery the rocks are, so I’ve had to become content with just looking at the ocean.
Our ministry for the first month will be fairly laid-back. We are to finish pulling the weeds in the church’s garden (they were everywhere when we first got here; we thought it was grass), plan and paint a mural in one of the children’s buildings, wash walls, visit an orphanage for an hour or two on Fridays, and help out with the church service on Saturdays. In October, we’ll spend most of our time helping Andrea come up with lesson plans for the after-school program that she wants to launch in November. Her vision is to give the children in this community the opportunity to learn computer skills and English so that they can dream bigger than having a career as a pool-cleaner or working in a restaurant if they want to.
Until then, we have an abundance of down time, which has been restful but difficult. It has given us a lot of time to spend with God individually and as a team, but it also means that we can’t use busyness to distract us from the issues that we were dealing with at home or the fact that we’re miles away from America with people that we barely know. Even in the last 24 hours, though, things have gotten much better. One of the three squad leaders, Katie (not the Katie on my team), is staying with us for the first week, and she initiated a time for us to be open with each other last night. God worked in a powerful way, and I think that this will help us move from coexisting peacefully to actually going deep with each other. The atmosphere today has been totally different.
I think that God is going to do amazing things in and through this team, but we have to actually know God, ourselves, and each other before we can reach our full potential. Please pray for unity and vulnerability on my team and that God will teach us how to use the gifts that He has given us.
P.S. I spent 30 minutes trying to upload one picture and finally gave up. Sorry about that!
