What A Week...

 This is me and a new friend from one of our daily kids programs... She was pretty excited about her animal balloon. Actually she refused to have a picture without her 'perrito' in it which is why my face got nicely cut out a little bit :)

So this past almost 2 weeks has been more on the difficult side. We were working with one church that had multiple locations (so one main church with sister churches around the area that are just starting up) and we stayed at each location for 2 days. It was a good set up with kids programs for a couple hours in the afternoon then youth programs in the evenings, with other random things in between like some pastors preferred evangelism in the plaza rather than youth programs at night. But because of communication problems and just a general latino or warm-cultured manner of things, almost every one of our plans was altered or completely fell through every day. From the first day where it was pouring rain which meant nobody showed up to either of our programs so we just went home (which is completely out of our control of course), to a few days later when we arrived at one of the new locations and the pastor had no idea we were going to be there so we had no ministry planned. As challenging and seriously frustrating as it was, the whole team really learned how to think on our feet and make the most out of opportunities.

For example, one night when zero youth showed up for our service, we decided we weren't just going to sit around. We walked a couple blocks to a plaza and started up some conversations with people. I met two younger girls, one 12 and one 19, and we had an awesome talk. The older one whose name was Ana ended up telling me a lot about her life and something she's going through with her parents. It surprised me how much she told me and just wanted to keep talking and the awesome part was I was able to relate to her through my history and pray for her. I shared with her some things I felt God wanted me to tell her and I think she really took them to heart. It was an amazing time where God really spoke to me how much He cares about very specific things. The fact that I, of all people, just happened to sit down with her and start up a conversation as a stranger and was able to relate to so much of her story and then share with her what God wanted to speak to her... I really felt like I was in the right place because He so badly wanted to communicate His love for this girl that He gave us the idea to walk down to the plaza, made sure my group just happened to sit down with these two girls, and that I would be the one talking to her.

Yeah, I was really in awe the rest of the night of how God uses situations that seem like a lost cause to show how immense His love is for his creation and how He uses us when we're available to do whatever we can. Even when it's a last minute attempt at having some form of ministry for the day when everything else has gone wrong, if we're still there to serve God regardless of the circumstances, He uses it for good. He's so cute :)


Sooooo we will hopefully be leaving for our next river trip tomorrow! Word on the street (ok some YWAM Iquitos staff told me) is that there's going to be a protest starting tonight so the roads might be blocked which means we might have to wait a couple extra days to leave. That would be really unfortunate and mess with all of our plans of course, so please please please be praying for open streets tomorrow or some form of transportation that isn't affected by whatever protest is going on! This protesting thing is super typical of Iquitos so I'm not surprised at all that it's happening, it just might conflict really badly with where we need to go. Also prayers while we're on the river for general safety, health since all of us got sick at some point the last trip, for unity in the team, and that we would take even more steps out of our comfort zone to really serve God, each other, and the communities we're in even when we don't necessarily feel like it.

I know this is a relatively long post compared to my last few. Hopefully it gives some insight into the things we're doing here -with God's help- and I'll post again when we're home!
Chau!