I´m writing from an Internet café in Cartagena on the coast of Colombia. This missions trip has been a huge blessing. First, the time spent with Pastor Alfredo and Scott has been edifying, and I feel like we´ve grown a lot closer. We share the same basic philosophy of ministry and have been able to talk about how we would like to work together in the future to start other churches here in Colombia.
Second, the time with the main group of people we came to visit has gone well. We´ve been able to have a Bible study every night with a group of about 10-12 different people, many of whom are not believers.
We´ve also been able to share gospel with many other people in the city here. Today I "happened" to pass by a stand that sells ice drinks and began to talk to the girl working there. It turns out that she´s from Bogotá (I enjoyed hearing the accent from there because it´s a lot easier to understand). She "happens" to have attended a gospel preaching church in Bogotá for about a year but isn´t a believer yet. She also "happened" to be in a bad car accident last week. I was able to share the gospel with her and she was visibly moved. She said that tonight she was going to read and apply to her life the tract that I left with her. We´re also going to have lunch with her today.
Besides all of that, we´ve been able to find a group of fundamental Baptist churches here in the city that we can recommend to people we know. It was a blessing for Scott to visit one of them last night and find that they are faithfully preaching the Word of God.
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Just a quick note from an Internet café here in Bogotá to say that our computer died on Sunday at church. For that reason we´ll be slightly out of the loop for a few weeks while we wait for our new one to come.
It´s actually nice to work without a computer at times. Less distractions and for some reason my ideas flow better on paper.
I haven't had many chances to write about great adventures here in Colombia, which may or may not be a good thing (sometimes "adventure" can have a bad connotation here, if we're talking about guerrillas in the jungle).
This morning I decided to jog to La Calera, a town of 25,000 people. On the map it said the distance between Bogota and La Calera was 9 km. Of course it's straight up the mountain on the east side of Bogota, but that's what attracted me in the first place. I took a bus to the road closest to the edge of the mountain and started out at 9:15 a.m. In the photo you can see the first undulating stretch up the mountain-- the first 3 km were brutal. Switch-backs straight up the mountain. I confess that I had to walk about every 300 meters. After running/walking for an hour, I finally reached the toll at the top of the mountain and figured I was almost there. Unfortunately the sign said that La Calera was another 8 kms! But I couldn't give up because I didn't go all that way to say I didn't make it.
Thankfully the 8 km were almost all downhill, so I made it to the pueblo in another hour.
Photo of the plaza en La Calera by "Diego en Bogota" from Flickr.com
I praise God for the ministry partner that I have in Chia. Jose and his family have been a great blessing, especially in language learning, cultural understanding, and friendship. This month's prayer letter from the Alonso's shows aspects of the ministry that I didn't have space to mention in our prayer letter. You can read it online at:
Alonso prayer letter (Note: there are three pages to the letter)