Tuesday!

 Today we finally did our first day of teaching, at Acoinprev. This school has 600 kids with many of them crammed into classrooms that were not designed to hold that many kids. Some students were sharing desks or at the very least just crammed into the room, but yet remained so joyful for the things they did have. Me, Kirsten, and Sheila are a teaching team, and even though we have much more experience teaching than the kids on our team do, we still had to fix some of the kinks in our lesson which gave us an opportunity to give it up to God to help us reach these kids more effectively. The kids were so generous as well, giving us candies, drawings, and even wanting to give us money. They had so little but were willing to give so much. 

Our next stop was a government run old folks home, where their residents are just taken off the streets. We sang a few hymns for them in English and Spanish and then got to talk to the residents, but as many as our team remarked, it was hard not knowing Spanish and being able to communicate with them. Ezra put it best when he said, "With kids, not knowing Spanish is ok because they will ask you questions and you might only be able answer a few of them. But the beauty of talking with people older than you is hearing their stories and learning from them and I wasn't able to do that."

We then went to the Salt Cathedral, a massive salt mine in the side of a mountain in which the miners had carved a whole Cathedral. They had artistic representations of the crucifixion of Jesus carved into the walls of the mine. While I may not agree with some of the added plot points, it continues to be wonderful to see the ingenuity and artistic abilities of the Colombian people. 

Finally, we stopped at a local ECA parents house for dinner. His name was Claudio, and he made us one of the best meals of the entire trip. He made us this smoked pork, sausages and ribs. It was truly incredible, but even more incredible was his dream of starting a restaurant in which he would serve this type of meat to people that could never afford it. The Lord has blessed Claudio but he does not hoard this blessing but uses it to bless even more people and it was truly humbling to hear about his heart for the poor. The people of Colombia continue to teach me more and more, and I am excited to see what the Lord has in store for our last few days of the trip.

(written by Michael)