Monday, January 25, 2010

a new city

God is crazy and i love him so much.
whenever i´m feeling discouraged or anything, God sends me an email through one of my friends.
when we got into this city the first thing i was thankful for was...drop in climate! this weather to me, is perfect. Well, winter and fall are perfect, but this is a very nice spring.
We had a debrief meeting with all the students and it was just fun for me to chill and talk with some of the girls and find out where they´re at.
we are all separated in three different apartments, but very close together. ours is across the street from the two other apartments. one is our meeting place, where we eat lunch and dinner together as a team (and all the boys and three of the girls live) and the other is where five girls live. I´m living with four other girls and they are pretty sweet people.

Currently we all have a weird sickness. mainly, its stomach aches but other people have fevers, so instead of doing park ministry today we are all just trying to relax and take it easy so that God can use us mightily sp? this week!
The second night here we realized as a house that we need to encourage one another more frequently and it was sweet because when i was reading my bible i got really stoked about the youth in this ctiy. Pereira sp? The youth are pretty much seeking after all of it...but really wanting God. So i was just reading psalms and the main thing that was revealed to me was hoping in God´s steadfast love.
This verse is amazing though::

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is over the waters; The
God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the
Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord
breaks the cedars of lebanon, He makes Lebanon to skip
like a calf, and Sinon like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire;
the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord
shakes the wilderness of Kadesh

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord
sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength
to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace.

::Psalm 29.2-8 & 10-11::

this city has a lot of problems with drugs and gang violence
and my heart is that the youth wake up from the haze that surrounds
their hearts and envelopes them in hatred and self loathing.
i want to see them find real joy and peace in the Lord and not in
all the drugs and everything else going on.

As a team, we are just praying a lot for this city and really focusing on what God wants to do and His heart for this city. It´s great too, because we are working with a really cool church here and they are so willing to walk along side us on this journey. So, if we talk with people and they want to know more about how they can get help or whatever, we can pray for them, but also have these people here helping them...especially because we´re only here for a short time.
I know that God wants to do something sweet in restoring this city and i feel excited that He wants us to be part of it.

I just want to bring peace and joy to these people.

love to each of you!
xoxooo

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

holy HEAT!!!!

we are here in Montelibano, in the heat of life!! its crazy to me that people are wearing jeans everyday. the weather is like 90 ish with 90 % humidity!
siiiick!

God is doing so much here though..everywhere we go people stare at us, because not many americans visit this town. we do park evangelism everyday and the responses we get are incredible. Everyone wants to talk with us afterward and with the help of our translaters, we are making this work! God has really blessed this team, because everytime they go with willing hearts, he uses them! my favorite thing is that we are just here to talk wtih people and pray for them...i like the way the Holy Spirit chooses to move, in ways that i wouldn´t have thought of, but it works.


i like colombia, not so much the heat, but i like the country and i like the people a lot.
we´ve gotten pretty close with three of our translaters here, they´re so funny and crazy! two of them are 18 and one of them is 15. it makes me wish my spanish was better...but it isn´t. yet. hopefully sometime in life.
the people here are my favorite thing about outreach. constantly giving, helping, and encouraging.
i guess its a good reminder for me, of how i want to live my life....


love love to everyone!

ciao for now. xoxoo