Colombia

Thank you again for all your prayers. The Halloween night was a success.  There were just under 200 under kids that came to our Halloween alternative.  At around 3pm our team met and made up 200 bags of candy to give away to the kids, we filled their bags and had candy left over. As far as I know there were no more kids that went missing and little Daniela was found.  Apparently her father was really abusive so she ran away.  She is now living in one of the homes run by the Colombian social services.  I am thankful that she wasn’t used as a sacrifice and I am thankful that she is no longer living with an abusive father.  Some kids do run away from these homes, stating that they are being abused there.  So a better alternative then the first two situations she was in.  Sometimes it is so easy here to lose hope, or to not have hope.  To look around and see these kids and the situations they are in and where their lives are heading....

Hi friends and family... So my goal is to be able to start a blog post without having to say that it's been so long... But once again apologies.  Life has been pretty crazy.  I was super blessed to go to my good friend Lori's wedding in Haiti in October and since I have been back it has been a little crazy.  I moved into my apartment, well mini castle hand have been crazy running around getting everything that I need for that, but soon it will be set up and next blog, or my news letter (coming soon), I will post pictures.  I also do not have internet in my house yet, which is one of that many reasons it took so long for me to post.  I also pre wrote a blog to copy and paste but alas my friends computer isn't reading my thumb drive so here I am typing it again. This blog I will try to keep short and sweet, but Colombia really, really needs prayer this weekend.  Sunday is elections here and I am told they have a tendancy to be a little dangerous.  Som...

                                                                                 So I am finally back in Colombia.  At times it seemed like it was never going to happen, but alas I am here and it feels so good to be back.  The picture to the right is the view from the living room window.  Isn't Colombia beautiful.  After being in the desert of Peru for so long, it's so nice to be back in the beautiful green of Colombia. After my DTS I spent some time in the town of Cengiella, which is just outside of Lima while I applied for my visa.  One of my friends and two families (one from Colombia and one from Holland) that I met while I was in Colombia last time, moved to Peru to start a ministry there.  Where the work is pretty cool.  They work in ...

So that's it, it's all over. My DTS that is. How do I feel???? It's always mixed feelings when things like this are over, but if I am being honest I am mostly excited. It was a just over 5 months filled with challenges, tears and laughter, I learned a lot and grew a lot but ready to move on to the next stage of life. Which is COLOMBIA YAY. I think I left off when we were in Arica Chile, which was so long ago so for that I am sorry. I think my favorite part of week is when we had people over to the church to watch the soccer game between Chile and.... (I forget). Anyways the day before we went out handing out invitations to people to come to this party and most of them were skater kids, who when we were hanging out with them were trying to show off by swearing and talking about marijuana. But a ton of them came and I loved it. We watched the soccer game and then we played some games and of course there were a couple times we had to tell them not to swear but to me...

First of all huge apologies for waiting so long to do another post. The bad thing about waiting so long is that there is soo much to tell and so little time so things end up getting cut out. But I will do my best to share with you all what has happened in these past 4 weeks. First off the split our group up into three groups of ten, but because of different circumstances we are now into two groups. I wouldn´t be lying if I said that these past four weeks have been incredibly challenging, but before I get to that part I will share with you a little bit of where we been and what we´ve been doing. So after we were done in the jungle we flew to Lima and the boarded a bus to Chiclayo, which is in the north of Peru. It was a long bus ride but as you guys can tell from the title of my blog that we spent a lot of time on buses, so the length of bus rides I don´t even remember anymore, other then they were long long long trips. So Chiclayo to me was a pretty awesome once in a life time experien...

Baby crocodile Common sight in Nueva York A little girl in Nauta that I am going to take to Colombia Nueva York Petronia and Zaul In Nauta

Well I survived the jungle. There were times where I thought it was touch and go, but alas here I am, with all my limbs, able to share the awesome experience it was with you guys. Our journey started with a 2hour bus ride to another river city named Nauta. We stayed there for four days at the camp/school/church place. We did some impact ministries, which in YWAM terms means that we did dramas on the street. Before we did these impact ministries we would walk around and invite people to them. That was really cool, going around to all these houses. We would also walk back and there would be this huge open area where there was like another little village. The houses that were closer to the river were built on stilts for when the river was higher. Going around house to house was my favorite thing about Nauta. People were unbelievably friendly and hospitable. We were welcomed into their homes and they would want us to sit down. If I am being completely honest, I didn’t find o...