July 9, 2011
Yesterday we said goodbye to a village, but today we got to go somewhere new. Our destination: Boma, the site for many Calvary construction projects. The road to Boma becomes very rough, so the team had a good 35 minute hike up and down hills and over a river. Rick has a 4-wheel-drive Jeep, so he took Josh and a few others with him directly there, which happened to involve driving through the river (gnarly!). The rest of us crossed the country-style land on foot, passing by cows that lacked manners and crossing another freaky hanging bridge. When we got to Boma, some of us played with the kids while the rest of us talked to the teens. Kaylyn and Ben shared their testimonies for the teens and then we headed out to play some games. We started with baseball, gringos (us) versus Dominicans. We got slaughtered. Last I checked the score was 20-3, with most of our points coming off of Darin’s 2-run homer. After shaking off the humiliation of a sound defeat, we tried again with soccer. This time, the gringos decimated the Dominicans. Rick didn’t like how lopsided it was, and told our best players (Daniel and Rovian, both translators) to play goalie, but we were still winning. Then Rick and Stanley joined the Dominicans, and they grabbed a few points before we called it quits. We returned to the village and enjoyed lunch at Boma. It was fantastic, and Rovian filled his plate at least three times with rice and beans. We then bought some paintings the kids had been making and headed back to La Salle for some down time. Excluding a game or two of Ka-Boom Ball (I had sorely missed it the last few days), it was very mellow at camp up until supper.
After we ate, we headed off the Buenos Aires for the Evangelistic service. It began with a test from God though. We arrived just as it started to rain. The downpour halted our plans of having the service at the butcher yard, where Catholics and non-Christians were more likely to show up. After praying about it, we decided to settle for the church building, knowing it would hurt our numbers. We had some good Spanish worship, followed by testimonies from Erin and Josh. Darin then told not only his story, but also told God’s story, using John 3:16. The message was awesome, and Darin actually spoke slowly for once. He asked if the Dominicans would like to accept Jesus into their hearts, though I don’t know if any openly did so. What I do know though, is that God can still use Darin’s message and the service as a whole, even if we never find out about the impact. It reminds me of one of our devos, which discussed serving without recognition.
We closed the night with a little more worship, including Open the Eyes of My Heart. I usually try to keep myself out of the blog, but I must say it was awesome to belt out the lyrics to that song in English while little Rafael belted them out in Spanish beside me. So cool. Pray for the continued impact of the service and pray for a strong finish for the team. (By the way, this blog may sound like rambling, as a group of shirtless guys wrote a song about me blogging and sang it to me while I tried to write this. My apologies :P )
After we ate, we headed off the Buenos Aires for the Evangelistic service. It began with a test from God though. We arrived just as it started to rain. The downpour halted our plans of having the service at the butcher yard, where Catholics and non-Christians were more likely to show up. After praying about it, we decided to settle for the church building, knowing it would hurt our numbers. We had some good Spanish worship, followed by testimonies from Erin and Josh. Darin then told not only his story, but also told God’s story, using John 3:16. The message was awesome, and Darin actually spoke slowly for once. He asked if the Dominicans would like to accept Jesus into their hearts, though I don’t know if any openly did so. What I do know though, is that God can still use Darin’s message and the service as a whole, even if we never find out about the impact. It reminds me of one of our devos, which discussed serving without recognition.
We closed the night with a little more worship, including Open the Eyes of My Heart. I usually try to keep myself out of the blog, but I must say it was awesome to belt out the lyrics to that song in English while little Rafael belted them out in Spanish beside me. So cool. Pray for the continued impact of the service and pray for a strong finish for the team. (By the way, this blog may sound like rambling, as a group of shirtless guys wrote a song about me blogging and sang it to me while I tried to write this. My apologies :P )
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