Its been awhile, so first let me say that my first time preaching went relatively well. It was anything but perfect, I didnt get to actually finish writing my message beforehand so it went decent to the point where my notes ran out. Then I kind of talked briefly about unity and whatever else came through my head. Just as I was getting really flustered and there were no words filling my head, Scott came by to check up on me and ended up talking for another 10 minutes, then the Pastor,Glen came up and used me and the other world racers as an example, he asked us what we did back home in the States and basically made the point that God can use anyone to spread his Kingdom.
Then most of the people came up for prayer at the end. It felt good to obedient and though in my eyes my words may not have come out right, there may have been a few long akward moment of silence when my mind just went blank. But it doesnt matter, I’m learning that God works in despite us, not because of us. He uses our weaknesses to show his strength.
———So the last few weeks I’ve spent a good portion of my time in the Barrio by the dump, Roberto Clemente. I really fell in love with mainly one of the families. The main one being the Mohica family. There are about 20 people in the family with about 8-10 kids. The family are all believers. I could talk more about them more, but I’ll just talk about my last day to give you an idea of how awesome they were to me.
So Friday was my last time going to spend time at the dump, I was really sad about it. Originally Stephanie and I had been planning on staying with the Mohica family on Saturday, but plans changed and we ended up leaving Saturday morning for the Island, so the media team can have time to come back together and share what happened and what God did in our lives this past month.
I decided I would bring the big video camera and try to shoot with it some. So I’d been hanging out with most of the family for an hour or two as they collected some stuff by the dump. We told them that me and some of my friends were leaving on Saturday morning, and they immediately wanted to prayer for us. So here we are sitting in the midst of the dump being fervently prayer over by a family who doesnt know where there food will come from day to day. I was really sad about leaving and just touched by there prayers and was trying to keep myself from really just bawling. After that I was kind of in another world for a little bit.
Then Stephanie and I decided that we wanted to cross to the other side of the “river” through the dump again, so the group left and Steph. was hanging out with the kids and I was getting some more video of the family picking through a load of trash that had just been dumped onto the edge of the “landfill”, So for a brief moment I thought about hwo i could I could get below where the trash was dumped and get some footage from a different angle. I was standing on the edge of the steep sloping pile of mostly burnt trash, I was about to attach the video camera to my waste when I just dropped it…..
And in slow motion it just dropped down in the mountain of trash. For a few seconds I just stared in disbelief that I had really dropped the camera. Then I quickly surveyed the area and thought that it wasnt smoldering so it was probably fine. So I jump down like 8 feet and my legs went into the trash all the way up to my knees. Despite not appearing to be hot, underneath the surface it was very hot….So I quickly picked myself up and scurried over to the camera and then as I finally realized that most of the terrain around me was indeed smoldering hot…And then one of the teenagers in the family came down and stretched his arm out to me and pulled me up away from the burning heaps of trash and onto the path back to the top.
At first I thought that I wasnt hurt other than scraped but when I got up there the pain began to settle in. At this point the whole family is gathering there precious drinking water from the shade to wet my legs off and they ran and found a big pile of scraps of fabric that are frequently seen at the dump(the fabric scraps come from Sweat Shops run by Koreans less than an hour from Diaramba).
They brought over a used computer monitor gathered that day for me to sit on and then another to rest my left leg on. As I took my sock off I began to realize that I had indeed been burned. So after they poured water and used the fabric to dry it off. So I stupidly decided that I was fine and decided to cross down through the dump, because I really wanted to spend more time with the family and not go back to the church and take more care of it. So we went down through the dump and the father in the family, Aldofo gave me a stick to use as support to help me cross down. So we went to his house and after we got there I took my left shoe off again and Steph. decided to get me some ice. So as she left, the family got out some cream and one of the older men covered my legs with the creaam. Then Steph. came back with the ice and I was trying to stay seated with the ice on it but Friday is the day when the family cashes in on there hard work throughout the week or two. This time it was paper and metal day. So I couldnt stay seated and not shoot, so I was hobbling around with my shoe off shooting them weighing the huge bags of paper. So after a bit the family came out with a sandle for me to wear.
So the family was great and they really took care of me and loved me. After they were done with weighing and loading the stuff in the paper recycling truck, we bought all the kids lunch and spent a little more time with them we decided we had to go back to the church for lunch so they asked how were goign back and we told them a motto and then they ran off and brought one over for us. The whole family gather and waived goodbye, I only hugged a few of them because I didnt want to have another emotional break-down again(that and I was in a decent amount of pain).
I have a ton of photos of the family and will add a photo of my nasty foot later, its really just 1 Big bubble thats like an 1.5 inch long and 1/2 inch puffed up. It could have been much worse…. Oh and the video camera was fine, it just needed a little cleaning afterwards.
So our team is now together in a hotel on the Island.
If you could be in prayer for our team unity and the decisions regarding how we will spend the next month that would be awesome.
Also 3 of my team members are in serious need of support, combined they need something around $5,000 by March 27 or they will be going home and our team will be really, really struggling. I’m trusting God will provide, but they need your prayers and if you feel led to help out in any amount it would be cool, all three of them are being used by God in amazing ways and it would be really hard to picture them not in our family. Jenny i has the lowest amount raised and is kind of on edge about it.
Jennyhttp://jennywillis.theworldrace.org/
Chris T…http://christelfer.theworldrace.org/
Annehttp://annewalcott.theworldrace.org/
Again thank you for all of your support and continued prayer, I’m sorry that I havent been more consistent with posting.
