Hey! Wanted to tell everyone a little something about what we have been doing here in Medellin. Everyone here has been so welcoming and has really made us feel comfortable! The place that we are staying at is called Ciudad de Refugio and it is a five story building that functions as a homeless shelter, drug rehab program, church building, office building, bakery, english programs, childrens ministries, and an overall community hub. All of our team is staying in different parts of the building and that has made for some challenging escapades! In order to get in and out of all of the doors in the building you have to have a key. This is for safety purposes for the residents staying in the building. We are not staying in a bad area of town it is just standard practice here to lock your doors, just like America. The only problem is that we only have two keys to the main door that gets us in and out of the building. Because there is more than twenty people on our team that requires a lot of back and forth for the people with keys to have to open the door. As a whole it has made us a lot more flexible and certainly more patient! It has required of me that I lose a lot of my independence but I needed that!
There are also amazing volunteers living and working here at Ciudad de Refugio. One such volunteer, Julia, has been living here for 10 months and loves the family that she has come to be a part of here in Medellin. I started talking to her when we got here a few weeks ago and she told me that her plan was to stay here another year because she couldnt imagine leaving. She told me that she had already extended her time here and that she would be staying another year in Colombia. She is from the Bronx, New York and I came to find out that she did an internship in Jacksonville not too long ago. She said that she loved the time that she spent in Jacksonville but New York is home for her. I checked in with her a few days ago to see how she was doing and she said that she had just received a call from the church where she interned in Jacksonville and they wanted to offer her a full time internship where all of her expenses would be covered and she could finish her degree there if she wanted too. She was so torn on what she should do because the opportunity in Jacksonville was something that she had been praying about and almost seemed to good to pass up but her heart was here in Medellin. I told her to keep praying about it and that when she went back home to visit in a month that she should consider all of her options and decide from there. I told her that if she tried to make this decision here in Colombia she wouldnt be able to separate herself from the people and places that she loved.
All of this was to say that I think that God opens lots of doors for us all the time and we dont always have the right key or the understanding that it requires to walk through those doors. When she was telling me about her options I thought of all of the times that I had blindly chosen a path for my life not knowing what other things I might be passing up. I am not sure that I told her this but I also thought that whichever path Julia chose, God would honor that decision and use her in an amazing way! I should probably tell her that! In a week we leave Colombia and head to Ecuador. It is crazy to think about closing this chapter and finishing our first month on the World Race but adventure is out there and Im excited to see what paths God carves out for us and what doors he opens!
P.S. Please pray for Julia as she makes her decision.
P.P.S. I could not think of a song about doors or keys so if you have any recommendations let me know! Here is a fun one in the meantime! https://youtu.be/kIJabiKOtCU
