update from Panama!

Hello my dear friends and family! I want to apologize first for not writing to you sooner. We have been incredibly busy since the last time I wrote to you and have had no availability to Internet. The last week of teaching ended about 2 weeks ago which I heard went well. The other 2 leaders and I had to leave early for NIKO training (the bootcamp for missions). We trained for 5 days without the students and finally they joined us in Talamanca-Bambu. The students then started the NIKO camp in the jungle which lasts for 4 1-2 days where we lead them through various stretching activities (the activities of the camp are not allowed to be told to anyone unless they have completed a NIKO, so I am sorry for not telling more). The experience of NIKO was a challenging one for me as a leader, but a very good experience of growth and leadership. I was reminded that the best leaders lead through influence rather than power.

We finished NIKO on October 8th and went to Puerto Viejo for a couple of days to do some ministry. Puerto Viejo is a little town on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It is mostly a party town where tourists go to get away for a couple of days. This town was hard for many of us as there are a lot of drugs and alcohol and a very hopeless spirit over the city. We visited a youth group on our first night being there and then did a prayer walk along the beach and prayed for the city. The next day we went to church and then the students started initiating their own ministries and they went into the streets and just started sharing with people their stories of what Christ has done in their lives. It was an awesome time of seeing God move in the streets. Our last night in Puerto Viejo I went with 2 students to visit a pizza owner and one of his co-workers. We started by asking him if he would like prayer for anything and he was very open to us and started sharing his story with us. He had been living in Puerto Viejo for 4 years now (originally from San Jose) and the last 2 years for him have been really hard. He has been robbed a couple times and his building almost burned down from some local teenagers. He has been really discouraged and so we were able to come and encourage him to keep going and that God has a plan for him. He was so encouraged when we left, it was awesome!

This last Monday (Oct. 11th) we started our travels to Panama. We ended up in a little island in Bocas del Toro (about 2 hours from the border of Costa Rica). Bocas del Toro is definitely a beautiful place and has been a place of openness to ministry. We started our ministry on Tuesday which was a prayer walk through the city to discover God´s heart for this place. Then we asked the students to pray about the week we are here and each student is responsible to lead a day of ministry in whatever area God is leading them. The first day of ministry was picking up trash in the community. The island is a fairly small and so when the white people started picking up trash it drew a lot of attention to us. The local news saw us doing this and started filming us. They interviewed a couple of our students and asked them what we were doing and why. One of the areas we went to was a very poor neighborhood which was somewhat flooded because of the tides here and the rain. There was so much trash and we just kept cleaning. Many of the locals came up to us and thanked us or started picking up their own trash and giving it to us. It was really a great start to the ministry here. After that, the news asked us to go to the station and get interviewed live for the evening news. They played footage of us helping the elderly and of us picking up trash and just asked us why we were here in Bocas. God is so good...He is allowing us so many open doors through the exposure they are giving us to this community!

Then the next day we went to a nursing home where the conditions are not very livable. We went to bring some joy and hope to the elderly here who have been mostly forgotten. We came and did a little program including singing songs and prepared some dramas, but mostly just talked with them and listened to their stories. While we were there we noticed that their room where they all slept (1 room for all the women, and 1 room for all the men) was very boring. The walls were blank and it was very sad, so we asked if we could come in and paint the walls for it to be a happier place and they said they would love it. So the next day we went and painted the walls of the bedrooms with Bible verse and colorful pictures. They absolutely loved the paintings and were so happy with how it looked when we were done.

We still have almost a week left in Bocas and are still praying about what other opportunities God has for us here. Please pray for us as we continue our time in Bocas...that we may reach the people here in Bocas with a message of hope and the love of Christ. Also, as we have been ministering the enemy is not happy with us. We have had some disunity and negativity in our group and that has made ministry very hard, but we remember that we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities...(Ephesians 6) Please pray with us as we fight this battle! Thank you so much for your support over this time and I will update very soon with pictures. There are some ministry pictures already up on my Facebook if you would like to see them. God bless you all and much love to you from Panama!