I think everyone in our group can say that today we felt much more confident than we had in our previous session the night before. Don´t get me wrong – we did a really great job last night, but today all of us just felt like we could do more with the kids now that we knew them. It was beautiful to see the way the people from our team were working with the kids and helping them with everything they needed, while also teaching them everything they needed to be taught. Even through a lot of conditions to work through – like sickness, exhaustion, and heat – we were able to persevere and show a desire to serve and help.
After our first rotations with younger kids in the morning, where we taught Bible stories and English and played games and had crafts, we were able to rest. The original plan was to work at a geriatric home, but there was some sort of issue with construction, and we weren’t able to visit it. The break included stopping to pray for one of the families and a trip on a motorcycle to deliver chairs for the rotations we would have in the afternoon.
Once the time had arrived for the older children to come, we saw that no kids were there and no kids were arriving. Desperate for a solution, Mr. Vargas took students to go invite people to the event. Once we saw that there wasn’t much interest, we decided to play soccer with the kids as a way of connecting with them and to show our interest in them and the things they liked. After about half an hour of playing, we invited them to the foundation for the meeting and they all rushed to come.
The entire afternoon was full of dancing and having fun for the glory of God, followed by a special message for the kids from Mr. Vargas, Tom Mena, and some of the other students. It truly was an incredible time. We were able to go play with the kids when we were done with our message as well. After a quick walk to the beach, the group headed back to say goodbye to all of the volunteers at the YWAM/JUCUM foundation, as we will be leaving tomorrow morning to go back and work with a church in Cartagena. It was inspiring, with the exchanging of encouraging words to each other and bracelets made specially by one of the volunteers for each member of our team. I pray that each day we can see as much growth in our team as we saw between yesterday and today.
