Hey everybody! This is Kayla. We are having an excellent trip so far and seeing God work with the locals and in our hearts continues to amaze me. Everyone here is so open to the love of God and want to hear what we have to say. We went to a small church on Sunday where we performed several skits and a guy on our team gave a really powerful message about the love of God and forgiveness. At the end of his message there was an altar call for people to accept the love of God as their own and over half of the church came up. The pastors and others working all looked pretty astounded at the miraculous turn out. Before church we had been going to places around the community and performing the Lifehouse Everything skit and another short nonverbal skit.
Yesterday we had a day off to do something fun so we drove three and a half hours each way to go white water rafting. For the first time in eight days we saw sunlight and the air felt warm. The difference the weather made in our team was astounding. The lack of sun in Villa El Salvador tends to make everything seem kind of dark and rather dreary, but we are all walking a little lighter today. Where we are staying there aren't any plants really, but there we saw grass, trees, and other plants. The rafting was really fun. There weren't any huge rapids, but our guide would always have us sit down in the boat if he knew it would get us wet, it was lots of fun. We all got soaked in the icy cold water, some of the team even jumped in at one point! About halfway down the river all of the rafts docked on a rocky bank where we then walked upstream and could float/swim back to the boats. The bus ride back from rafting was exciting because the bus randomly died when it was stopped to let people off and we all had to pile out and get on another one.
I'm looking forward to seeing how God can use me and my team during the rest of the trip. We will be doing mostly children's ministry for our last week and a half I believe which is always good for lifting spirits. I ask for prayer as we begin the last leg of our trip so that everyone stays focused, motivated, and present. There has been a lot of sickness, too, so pray that everyone stays healthy.
Thanks, Kayla.
It was so good to read your blog post, along with the others that posted today. We have been praying that you would have fruitful ministry, and it sounds like God has been answering that prayer. We can’t wait to see pictures and hear about the stories in person. We will continue to pray for everyone’s health and safety, and for some more sunshine! We love you, Kayla!