What Colombia Was Like!

Hello everybody! It has in fact been a long time since I last wrote. Buckle up for back to back blogs. My time in Colombia has ended but there’s so much to share! I’m currently on a plane to LAX in hour 27 of traveling to Vietnam. Needless to say, I have some time on my hands and I haven’t forgotten about my blog!
I’ve had a lot of curiosity about the average days I had in Colombia so that will be the main focus of this post.
We had four days of ministry each week, a Sabbath for resting, a day for church, and an adventure day for exploring. I spent a total of six weeks in Medellin, Colombia and it went both slow and fast. I loved it all. For ministry days there were a few things that each team rotated between. Most of our ministry happened at the homeless foundation we stayed at, so this means our aim was to help the foundation out. Since we helped them, they were able to better serve the people of Medellín, specifically focusing on homeless people and drug addicts. Essentially we were able to be the background workers to help the people already on the ground do their job a bit easier. It’s actually not the ministry a lot of us expected but of course I believe it’s what God had in store for us. This ministry allowed us to be humbled in the “credit” we got and we were able to serve in an unseen way. It’s easy to “feel good” about ministry when you visually see an impact or get to talk to people often. This will happen of course, but that doesn’t mean the minsitry we did here in Colombia was unimportant. On the contrary, I think it has well prepared us for the type of ministry we’ll get to do in Vietnam. The main point is this, that everything be done in love. Just as 1 Corinthians 13:2 says, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”. You can do any kind of ministry, “more important” or not, but if it is not done in love and unto the Lord, it is utterly worthless. This is a valuable lesson our squad learned throughout our time in Medellín.

With that out of the way, let me get into some specifics of what ministry actually looked like!
We did things like cutting and sorting vegetables, recycling paper, cleaning the foundation buildings, handing out bread to homeless people in the Broncs, children’s/youth ministry, etc. I enjoyed all of it quite frankly. Cleaning the building and cutting vegetables was probably my favorite though. In almost all of this ministry, I was also able to connect so much more with my team. This was one of my favorite parts of Colombia. Amazing, Christ centered friendships were created with many conversations during ministry.

Sidebar after sidebar, here’s an actual rundown of a normal ministry day in Medellin.
Our days started around 8, ideally including me waking up before that to read the Word. Breakfast was served to us by the foundation. Amazing Colombian food and coffee each morning. It’s astonishing how greatly we were served when we came to serve. The people at the foundation and every Colombian I met, showed a level of hospitality I’ve never seen before. It taught me a lot. After we ate, it was usually right into ministry. We would cycle between the types of work listed above, and do one for about a week. Usually from 9:00-11:30 we would work. Then we were served lunch and got back to ministry from 1:30-5:00. All of the times varied day to day but this is generally the idea. We got dinner each day at 5:20 and afterwards were “free” for the rest of the evening. I spent my evenings doing so much and they were always so sweet. We had roof access at the foundation and that was a favorite place of mine. Amazing views of God’s creation and great company of my friends. Some of my favorite things I did in the evenings were things like bake, hang out with the squad, draw, laugh, sing w people on the roof, and so much more. I think the Lord provided us with this evening free time to draw us closer as a squad. We lacked unity in many ways before Colombia, and we’re much more tightly knit now. Thank you, Lord.

I didn’t have too many crazy adventure days in Colombia for a variety of reasons but I always had fun. I got to explore the city, go to markets, enjoy the cultural experience of a foreign grocery store (seriously one of my favorite things), drive in the Andes Mountains, visit the abundance of malls in Medellin (seriously mall culture thrives here) and go time and time again to a plethora of coffee shops. So much to explore in Medellín. Sabbath days either included some things like I mentioned above or staying at the foundation to rest. We also had church each Sunday (different day then sabbath) and that was really fun. The worship was so lively and it’s fun to sing in Spanish. I did get cultural fatigue from trying to understand the sermons but God still moved despite that. Of course He did. Anyways, no day looked the same in Colombia but this is a rough overview of what they may have looked like! Thank you so much for providing resources to get me here, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. It’s truly a gift from God that I’m here, so thank you for playing a part in His plan. Stay tuned for my next blog post, discussing what God did in Colombia!