Dia de Amor y Amistad

Saturday was Colombia's equivalent to Valentine's Day, Dia de Amor y Amistad. We celebrated at school on Friday and it was so fun. I recieved lots and lots of roses from my sweet students and our staff played a secret friend game where we spent two weeks sending little candies and notes to our secret person. On Friday we had a party and presented our gifts. My person was Angela, one of my first friends in Colombia, who used to drive me to and from school when I was too scared to ride the public buses. Don't think I'm a wimp, I had to take a "surviving Bogota" course that tramautized me and made me believe I would be stabbed if I rode the bus when I first moved here. Im over that now and ride them daily, don't worry mom, it was all lies. Bogota is full of beautiful people who are always helping me. Just this week I bought a new prepaid card for rides on the transmilenio and a few minutes later someone was running to catch up with me and tapping me on my shoulder. Some nice man handed me my card and told me I had dropped it while putting my things away. Stuff like happens to me all the time. Speaking of love, I got to go to a really neat teenage mother home on Saturday where we talked about love and celebrated with the young moms. I was so thankful I got to go, because it was one of the ministries I was most excited about when I heard about all the ones ECA is involved in. I was able to spend some time in a home like this while I was in Peru. I loved it so much and it scared me to death because it is hard to understand how God lets some of the things that happens to those girls happen. It is also so hard to relate to them because I have such a different background. God is powerful though and I am learning He can work through any situation. One beautiful girl there was only 13 with a tiny baby. Her parents died when she was 12 and when she went to live with her aunt and was raped by her uncle. So hard to understand how God can redeem a situation like that and work through it. Not all the stories are that hard to hear, but some of them are really tough. I know it was intimidating for our middle and high school girls that came too, because they are so sheltered and protected. I worked with the girls to make these really cool beads, that next month we will turn into jewelry and sell to people. We are trying to work our a fair trade type business for them so they can make money while they are there. They are excited when ECA students come because they can never leave that house. When they have tried outings in the past, girls run away and abandon their babies for life back on the streets. So day in and day out they are there with 40 other girls and 40 loud babies. The best part of the day was when Lilia (she is in charge of all our ministry outreaches and was born to serve, the girl is amazing) and her husband shared their love story. She is American and he is Colombian. They have a neat story and I think it was so good for the girls to hear about how much Leo treasures her, respects her, values her, loves her and protects her. They used 1 Corinthians 13 to share what love looks like when it is lived out and asked the girls where they have seen real love like this. It is hard for them to identify because so many come from homes where love was never displayed like this or were not treated well by boyfriends. Of course they talked about experiancing God's perfect love and how there is nothing else like it. So it was a good way to spend my first Dia de Amor y Amistad in Colombia. If you want to buy some jewelry or donate scrapbook paper, string, beads, or glue let me know.

My students at school have been great. Most days they are great, some they are just crazy. We made apple pies while we studied the letter a this week and we also went on our first field trip which was hilarious. We are still studying living things and are learning about animals and how God provides for them so they can survive. So we went to this really cool restaurant down the street from our school that has horses, sheep, llamas and goats. They taught us all about what the animals need and how they take care of the them. When we were leaving the school there was no gaurd at the gate so we waited ten minutes before we could actually get going. There had been torrential downpoors the day before and the street we needed to walk on with no cars was flooded. So we made the kids hike through this tall grass and carried them over the water. All of us were covered in mud. Colombians do not think it is funny for your shoes to be dirty, so I was super stressed out that parents were going to be mad. The presentation was great and the animals were really fun, but on our way back we had to walk on a busy street and were locked out of school again. We will always plan our trips around the gaurds lunchbreaks for here on out. They were all really well behaved on this trip, despite the chaos so I was so proud of them. The pictures are up top even though I tried for twenty minutes to get them to post here.

I love the Bible curriculum I use with my students. We have been talking so much about the affects of sin and how through one man sin entered the world. This week we are talking all about sacrifices and why God required animal sacrifices in the old testament. We haven't even gotten to Jesus yet, but they are learning the affects of sin and how it seperates us from God. It is intense, I didn't learn some of this stuff until I was in my twenties after I was a Christian. I am a big fan of not dumbing down the Bible for kids though. I always thought it was so weird that God made the Israelites do that and never understood the meaning. Why not let 5 year olds get it? It is a John Piper curriculum and it is so good. Here is one of my students saying their Bible verse from this week:

I have started teaching English classes on Saturday to six adults, it is super cool. All my students are really fun and we have the best discussions. I also get paid for this and am saving up for a cool trip to take in October for our break. It is so refreshing to get to teach big people after a week with 23 little ones. I do have to miss out on some of the school's outreaches, but I am thankful for this oppurtunity. I take 3 free Spanish classes a week, two of them are 0ne-on-one with an amazing teacher named Jairo. He makes class so fun and I am learning a lot. I have also started discipling a beautiful 10th grader named Jannett. I love her so much and we have already had some really neat meetings. We are going through this book called, The Air I Breathe, by Loui Giglio and I have been learning a lot through it as well. More to come on her later.

Families have continued to bless me over and over. One mom took me home with her and my student, Isabel, last week. She took me grocery shopping and taught me to say all the fruits in vegetables in Spanish. She bought me a ton of fruits that I never tried before and then took me to her house and taught me to make some amazing dishes that I can't wait to try out on my family at Christmas. Another family took me to church with them two weekends ago and then outside of Bogota for a wonderful lunch and dessert in Sopo. The food was a amazing and the company even better. They only let me speak in Spanish and I tried lots of new foods. The best part was that I found out my student' grandparents (the pastors of the church I attended that day) were the first people to bring Campus Crusade for Christ to Colombia. They started it on college campuses in the three biggest cities in Colombia: Bogota, Medillin, and Cali. When I told them that I became a believer in college through CCC we all teared up a little bit. Josue's grandpa went to the same seminary as Bill Bright, has met him and his wife, and spoke to them on the phone many times. It was such a blessing to meet people here who are so passionate about that ministry and to hear about how God is using them in such big ways. Josue's dad is a pastor on one of the main college campuses here in Bogota and so is his Uncle. I have been attending a really neat small group with them on Tuesday nights for college students and young professionals. It is incredible and I have met some really neat people.

Life in Bogota has gotten incredibly busy lately but I am loving it. Despite being homesick and missing all my friends and family sometimes, I am so thankful to be here. There is still lots of time for fun too. ECA took all the teachers on a retreat three hours away from Bogota last weekend. It was a gorgeous place. We did have lots of meetings but plenty of time for fun too. We did lots of swimming in the pool and river, enjoyed the lovely scenary and had a fun time growing relationships within all the ECA staff. This is the first time my aide, Gloria, and I have hung out outside of school. She taught me how to play this crazy ping pong game with about 15 people. You have to run around the table and each player hits the ball one time until someone misses up. It was like ping pong on crack but so fun.

Thank you for keeping in touch and for praying for me. I love you all!