Dec 8, 2014
Missing Team Oba Today. The time when we took 26 of the same Polaroid pictures and my thighs were burning.
-HJ
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Missing Team Oba Today. The time when we took 26 of the same Polaroid pictures and my thighs were burning.
-HJ
Palenque + Arjona… !?!?!?! Peace.
Hola Amigos
Jin reporting news from the past 5 days
Let me first start off with Palenque…
Founded by escaped slaves as a refuge in the seventeenth century - Palenque is a small village of 3.5k Afro-Colombians. Because no one actually looked Colombian, I felt like I was back in Africa.
Side note - The Colombia government doesnt want to do anything with these people. No Colombians comes to visit so imagine how they felt when they saw bunch of Asians rolling in…✌
The house we stayed in greeted us with bats, lizards, spiders, and other friendly bugs.
Palenque was ridiculously hot. The team suffered from heat rash, interesting tan lines, and some got burnt.
What are roads. Roads are basically mud/dirt covered in pig, dog, cat, horse, donkey, cow, chicken poop with a hint of a very sour-y and curd-y smell.
Water is very, very scarce. Water got cut off as soon as we arrived. After two days of buckets of sweat, we had a bucket of water each to complete our 3 minute shower. Again, water is scarce!
… lol we struggled a bit when we first arrived to Planque haha. The spiritual atmosphere is very dark and heavy there. Only 1% are Christians and witchcrafts/Voodoos are performed. BUT…One of our team members, Jess, shared a word from Mister Dahari… “Voodoo is doodoo!” I took alot of comfort from that… haha it just made me laugh and made casting out demons…fun.
In Palenque, we did house to house evangelism, VBS, and prayer walks! I want to write everything that happened but… I promise you just grab one of us when we get back and we will spoil you with awesome stories. But for the meantime…
Praise Alert - we ran into into a boy name Rafael out in the “Plaza” area. He had a really bad cut with sitches and really, really bad swelling. And being led by the Holy Spirit, our team members prayed for the boy and… the SWELLING WENT DOWN. I dont think I am doing a good job of explaining how BAD the damage was on the boy’s feet. IT WAS BAD. And our medics (Miguel, Linda, and Subie) really did an amazing job patching it back up and treating it afterwards. (Oh and Miguel is Michael Choi. He is beginning to look more and more like Miguel here… with the tan and the no shaving… and the worn out clothes)
next, ….VBS was amazing. The body worship, games, and teachings… all so good. Jessica and Julie did an amazing job leading everyone in body worship and Minah shared her testimony. The children, Palenque team, and our #COLO14 team … all of us were really blessed. We danced so much with the kids - dlee is really skinny now. really skinny.
And side note… Jenn, Jess, and Becca are AMAZING with kids. Subie, Linda, Julie attracts all the little cute babies and Minah talks up a conversation with ALL the children. Dlee is known as Señor Fuerte (Mr.Strong) here - super popular… I feel like next future generation men in Colombia are going to be muscular because after seeing Dlee, all the kids started doing pull-ups and push-ups. Miguel attracts all the kids with his guitar skills! And for me, you know, me being me.
*** And shout out to the previous Daniel DTS Colombia Team, thanks to those guys. The Colombian Team leader, Monica was VERY firm on the NO SOPAS rule (soup)… aka we didnt get sick! hehe thank you ***
And also, I just got out of our team debrief and… man, I can’t begin to explain how thankful I am for an AMAZING team. I am learning so much from each and every one of them. I am extremely humbled. I love my team members. ABBA, I cannot thank you enough for this awesome team. I could have not asked for a better team. Okay, my confession time is over.
Alright, I will have to do another blog entry about Arjona because our team loved, loved, loved, loved, LOVED Arjona. We were so blessed and… I mean I have so many stories to share but internet gets cut off here like…now. Sorry, if my writing is all over the place. TIME CRUNCH. I’ll be uploading pictures from Palenque and Arjona tomorrow.
We miss you all and thank you for your prayers for the team. We feel it!
Adios amigos!