Making an IMPACT

Forgive the absense of an update last week, we werent able to have a free day due to the "Impact" program we recently finished (I'll get back to that later). We had two busy weeks here at "Familia del Rey" - the church we have been staying at since i last wrote. The first week was very much like the week at Oscar's church. We had three days of kids club and the rest of the week we spent teaching dramas and dances to the teens and performing our own presentations on the streets. My highlight of the week was a presentation we did right outside of the church on the street (literally) for a whole bunch of kids. I had a blast! I don't know if performing for kids is just more fun or if it was because God just gave me energy that i absolutely did not have earlier...probably both. The downer on the week was that all three of our leaders got sick. Hugo caught a chest cold somehow that he is still getting over and has passed on to Aaron (please keep them in your prayers). Aaron and Axis both had some type of stomach bug. This forced us all to take a "downtime" day, but thankfully they recovered quickly.
The cockroaches are better here....and I don't mean they gone, i mean they're better at hiding and running away from my shoe. One night during Impact I hardly slept at all because of the heat and the mosquitos (btw bugspray does not work, i now have 80 bites) and when I finally did sleep I was awaken by one of these lovely creatures walking up my arm. Awesome. Other than that, I have enjoyed our time at Familia del Rey, this church is a decent size and has an upstairs so we have more privacy. The people as always are extremely welcoming and feed us way too much. It has been a lot of fun, several people from the last church have followed us here so we have been deepening friendships and making new ones. We are about to move on to the next church tonight.
So back to Impact, which is what we spent all of last week on. Impact is a recently started program in YWAM for teens that is meant to be like a mini DTS. Usually it runs for two weeks, but we decided to cram everything into one, which made some craziness, but it all worked out. I am starting to get used to craziness anyway. Because Hugo was sick, Aaron and Axis took over leading most of the time and did a fabulous job. A typical day started with breakfast of tea and bread (Peru anyone?), the devotional time, followed by worship, teaching, work duties, then drama practice for the rest of the day until evenings which is when we did outreach. Usually we'd pack up outside around 10 and come back for dinner. Each day we had amazing times of worship, I was always just blown away by how they had such worshipful hearts. Most of the time worship time went way longer than planned, but that was quite alright with me. I have found many new ways to worship God that go beyond singing (since most of the time I dont know the Spanish songs). Of course, teachings were great too. Hugo taught one day on God's father heart and about how we need inner healing if we are to help heal others. This brought on many tears as everyone shared about past hurts or experiences that they wanted to deal with (some for the first time). It reminded me of my lecture phase : ). My team was rather shocked about how so many stories were similiar though. It was staggering to hear about how many suicide attempts, broken families, or abuse problems there were. But learning to trust God through those things has made these teens so strong in their faith. It is really amazing. All of them had stories to tell about times when they heard God, or saw visions, dreamed dreams etc. They put my whole former life to shame. Before I came to YWAM I hardly ever remembered to have a daily quiet time. I think as Americans we never really know how blessed we are until we can come to a place like this and see how some people are used to living. Yet living such a rough life teaches some of them so much more about reliance on God and having complete faith. They also were really open about sharing when we did outreach. They loved talking to people about Jesus, it gave them such joy and motivation...I have a lot to learn from them, I dont know why I was a "leader" : ). It made me really proud to see them do the dramas and dance we taught them too, they are just a great group in general!
Well, today we are all taking a much needed break. The past two days I was not feeling the greatest though everytime we had presentations to do, God always helped me through it and I would be energized and excited. As I have said before, seeing the small blessings is just as cool as seeing the big ones. I am feeling pretty decently today though my body is still recuperating from two weeks of little rest so I could sleep all day I think. But sleeping is no fun ; ). We may go to the capital tonight for a tour so that should be interesting and tomorrow is another slower day (or so we have been told). I hear it is unbelievably cold in PA right now....97 degrees was our hottest day so far, I miss the icicles sometimes. Though I can't say I am too jealous of your weather : )

Bendiciones a todos! Until next week!