This weekend has been something I’ve never experienced before. I’ve never sat in a crowd of Colombian drug addicts who are in recovery, shouting their praises to God. I’ve never worshiped in a language that I don’t understand. I’ve never walked down a street knowing that there are drug deals going on around me, and I’ve never before felt my heart ache for a city as large as Medellin.
I sat in a window on the fourth floor of the compound as the sun set last night, and watched as the lights began to turn on in the city. From my window, I can see for miles. I can see millions of homes nestled into the side of the mountains. My heart hurt thinking about the thousands and thousands of people living within my eyesight who didn’t know about Jesus. I was trying to wrap my mind around the idea that all these people could live life not knowing about freedom in Christ.
Later than evening I shared that thought with my friend Josh, who before the race is heavily into Young Life in Arizona. He nodded in understanding before reminding me that Jesus didn’t meet everyone in the towns he traveled to. “All you need to do is love the person in front of you. That’s what Jesus did. He traveled, he loved, and disciples grew from that.”
I heard somewhere that if everyone that knew Jesus disciple three people, and those three people each discipled three people, then in 36 years the world population would have heard about Jesus. It’s frustrating to me to know that concept even exists, when it is so hard!
Yesterday my team helped lead a VBS for a bunch of kids up the mountain. We had 25-35 kids show up and spend an hour with us doing games, crafts and then we got to teach them a bible lesson. Every Saturday night the City Refuge has this VBS and they’ve been moving through what we would consider the Christmas story. We talked about Mary and Joseph fleeing Bethlehem to keep their baby alive.
I don’t speak Spanish, and those kids didn’t speak English, but I do know how to love. That’s all I really did, some of my team were able to be a part of acting out the scripture that was read in Spanish, and some led some activities, but I just loved the kids. We played Cops and Robbers, which kicked my team’s butts (those kids are fast!) I loved getting to laugh and play and meet these Colombian friends.
After hugging my new friends goodbye, we headed back to the compound for a Saturday Evening church service, where I experienced Spanish worship for the first time. I could pick a few words that I could decipher but what was more incredible was looking around and seeing people that had experienced so much hurt and so much pain with their hands high in the air in surrender to God. Watching the women dancing and praising God hit me like a truck. How far these people had to come – from drug addicts living in the streets to sitting in a garage praising the Lord with 60 other Colombians in healing! Tears were in my eyes as I just took in the sight – the sound of God’s glory is sweeter than honey.
I got to spend more time later that evening with a few more kids, most of which had been to the VBS we’d held earlier in the afternoon. We played some games and then I shared with them a little bit of my testimony of God’s provision. We talked about staying motivated to be our best for the Lord, and I told them about how I used to hate school, and it was only with God’s help that I succeeded so well and graduated high school with a trade. I encouraged them to cling to Jesus when life is hard, as it will surely be. I told them they were loved, and I was so thankful to be able to talk to them.
This morning was Sunday church. We experienced Colombian worship again, and again I was struck with a reverence for what was happening in the City Refuge. Lives were being drastically changed in Jesus’ name. People were recovering from lives of alcoholism and hard drug use. They were being taught life skills and being taught how to manage money and how to be a positive functioning member of society, and through all that they were also gaining salvation in Jesus!
I am only in Medellin for another few hours but I have grown to love this place and these people. Tonight my team of 7 girls will take an 8 hour bus ride to Planeta Rica where we will be beginning our real work for the month. (We would have gone earlier but the pastor there was on vacation with his family, so we stuck around here for a few days with another team from our squad.) Here we are after church this morning –
I did not feel very well this morning and had a rough start to the day, and after lunch I began to pack up my bag for the trip this evening as much of my team walked up to the marketplace. When they returned, Emma walked up to me and handed me a Pepsi which is my favorite type of pop, and wow I could have cried! I did not ask her for it but she bought it for me just in love and it meant so much to me. I even took a picture because I was so excited about having Pepsi in Colombia. Here there is only coke, which I do not enjoy nearly as much.
I am thankful for great friends, Jesus’ love and the ability to travel and love those around me. I am far from perfecting it, and sometimes I’m really bad at it, but if I could do one thing for the rest of my life I think it would be loving the person in front of me, even when I don’t always feel like it.
I have been loved deeply in moments of my life where I surely did not deserve it. That kind of love has shaped who I am, and I want to turn that around as much as I can.
God is great, pop is good, and people are crazy.
