Life in Colombia

May 11, 2018

Once again two months have passed since my last blog post and life has been CRAZY but so good.

I have water which is awesome… we pumped water a couple times and then pretty much everyday in April it rained, which filled my tanks. No more saving my dish water and flushing toilets once a day with that. Even though the tanks are overflowing a little, I still try and be a little conservative with my water.

My mom also came for a visit at the end of April beginning of May which was awesome and so nice to have her.

Two good friends of mine moved really close, if you had a good arm I am sure you could throw a football from my front door to theirs, which is really nice actually. I have my space when i need it but still have community really close.

I have had two different Colombian team come up for a day and help get things ready and they worked hard and got a lot done. Cause there is A LOT to do and if I am being honest sometimes I get overwhelmed with all there is to do and with an unending to do list I don’t even really know where to start. My two friends that are living here are going to help me out two days a week, which is a HUGE blessing and I am kind of going to use them to help me make camp decisions… they have both helped out at camp in the past and I think they will be good to bounce ideas off of and help me think critically when decisions need to be made. I do however still feel kind of alone in this camp journey and really need full time people, I really do work so much better as part of a team. Again, while I have a lot of people that are interested in camp and have come to help out, I have yet to find people who can commit to full time. So really if any of you love camp ministry and love missions and love the outdoors, you should really pray about coming to Colombia :)

Also this past week I’ve had two scary incidents that happened. There has only been three times that I have really been scared in Colombia and once was the first time I was here and got robbed by a group of kids with knives (in 200), and then the two other times happened this week.

Once my mom left on Saturday and before my friends moved in on Wednesday I thought it would be a good idea to put the alarm on in the top part of the house (I live

in the bottom part), I thought just incase anyone decided to come in the alarm would sound…little did I know (well no one told me) how sensitive it is and that even a moth can set it off. So Sunday night, sometime after 11pm I was woken up by the alarm and I was freaking out…I was sure that someone had broken in. I stayed really quiet in my room but then after about 10 minutes decided to go upstairs, cause I thought it would be better to get over with what ever was going to happen, instead of waiting in my room. So I went upstairs, praying every step, but I got up there and all the doors where shut securely and all the windows too, so it must of just been a moth…Praise the Lord that it was nothing more, but it did give me a minor heart attack and needless to say I don’t sleep with the alarm on anymore.

Also on Wednesday I went for a walk to the river (which is not on our property) and I was just sitting there and this guy comes walking up on the other side of the river. At first I thought he was just a farmer as there were cows on the other side. I said hello to him and he didn’t answer, which I thought was weird and very uncolombian like, and then he starts to go down to the river and starts looking for a place to cross, which I also thought was weird…not to far down was a bridge and if he was from around there he would of known that, and then he starts to get in the water and thats when I knew that he was trying to cross to rob me and my dogs were also barking like crazy at him… he was just about knee deep when I took off…I have never ran so fast in my life. I kept randomly looking back but didn’t see him, so I don’t know if once he saw me take off if he just thought it wasn’t worth it or if I am just a super fast runner. I did stop at two house on my way to warn them, just incase they saw him.

Anyways I am super thankful that I now have friends close by to help with camp and to run ideas off of and for community and for safety as well.

I am super thankful that despite being alone here (up until Wednesday when my friends moved in) and those two scary incidents, I haven’t been afraid and have been sleeping well and not getting scared at random noises (which I have done in the past, I have a wild imagination)

I am super thankful for those two teams that came up and got all sweaty and dirty and worked really hard to help get camp ready.

I am also super duper thankful that Capilano (my sending church in Edmonton) is sending a team down at the beginning of June… I am so excited for this.

And I am just super thankful to be living here at camp… the land is so beautiful and I just have the most amazing back yard.

Please keep praying for safety though… it’s just a good thing to pray for when one is living in Colombia.

Please keep praying for a permanent, FULL TIME staff to help with camp and someone else that can drive, as driving in Bogota is probably one of the things that I hate most.

Please pray for my dear friend Claudia, she helps with camp A LOT and has been a key person at camp and a huge support to me. Almost a month ago she had a stroke (she is only in her 50’s). She is doing much better now but still has memory lapses and gets confused really easy. The doctors say that she should make a full recovery.

Well for now that is all, thanks again for your prayers and support.