Yesterday had a great impact on everyone int he group. The first thing we did was get to know the community and the people who live in the Barrio Los Ramirez. There are many families and lots of children all over that village. So often they would follow us because they were so curious about us. Some of us felt like perhaps we were invading, but the people of the village were extremely friendly and welcoming. It helped that we were led and guided by some of their own - Hansel and Clara who themselves are from that community and serve at the community church.
Words cannot fully express what we saw. In many ways it was not easy to fully process everything as it was happening and it may still take some time to digest that experience. We absolutely love the children and it gave us a much greater purpose and meaning behind all the manual work that we did over the past two days.
Although the painting of the school was challenging and took us the majority of the time, we also had an opportunity to share and listen to some stories of those who belong and even serve at the church and at the school, sharing in their burdens and ministering to one another through the encouraging message of the Gospel! From the discussions on top of the roof last night many shared that they really wished they could share the Gospel with the people of the community had they been able to speak the language.
Today in the midst of all the work we did manage to squeeze in some salsa dancing, you should have seen Barbara doing her thing! A couple of our girls even buss out some Junkanoo moves and choreography - that was surely a show. Stay tuned for the video ;)
In the words of one of our students, "it really does not matter what culture you are from or what language we speak, the Gospel remains the same". This was one of the most powerful statements that was shared last night. The way that this trip is already impacting each person in the group as we all learn about one another and how to overcome the challenges that we so often took for granted, such as being able to speak to someone in the same language, will stay with us forever. This has been a learning experience relationally thus far and although each one of us are taking something different from this experience, we all have this one thing in common - learning how to stay positive and have an attitude of gratitude.
Tomorrow is our last day with our friends in this community and our teen Red Zone leaders are preparing some fun activities for about 75 kids, including a massive water balloon fight! It will be a sad moment to leave, we will sure miss some of them with whom we had a chance to really connect...
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