Lost in Translation

I haven´t had a chance to blog about anything because the team that was with us just left on Tuesday and we´ve been trying to catch up this week. Last week while we were with the group we heard the best news for Colombia we´ve heard in a while. Ingrid Betancourt, the three American hostages and 11 Colombians were rescued by the Colombian military from the FARC guerrillas. When we saw the announcement on TV, I was moved emotionally. The operation was a huge strike against terrorism in this country because the FARC lost their most important hostages and the way that the military tricked the guerrillas shows that they´re closer and closer to defeat.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with the group from Campus Baptist Church. In fact, nothing went wrong on the trip. We didn´t have any troubles; everyone had a great time; we had about 65-70 kids total in our basketball camp and were able to teach them the eight essential truths about the gospel (God, man, sin, death, Christ, cross, faith, life) in relation to basketball. On Saturday, 23 kids came to a youth activity at our church and 10 made professions of faith in Christ. As I was meditating on the liberation of Ingrid, I thought about how she was a captive when she woke up on July 3, 2008. But later in the day she was rescued and free. This is exactly what happens when someone places their faith in Jesus Christ. They are rescued and set free!

Today we spent almost all day shopping for food for the missions team that is coming down tomorrow. 16 people are coming down from our sending church, Campus Baptist of Ames, Iowa. God has blessed with the preparation for the trip, as it looks like a good number of teens have signed up for the camp (70 had already signed the last time I checked), and more will surely sign up (we´re shooting for about 100-120). The team should Lord-willing get in tomorrow night at about 8:45 p.m., so we´ll be getting to Chía about 10:30-11 p.m. We´ll have an orientation day on Saturday, then church on Sunday, a camp prep day on Monday, the camp from Tuesday to Friday, a youth activity on Saturday, church on Sunday, a trip on Monday and then on Tuesday they´ll be heading off.

I also just wanted to plug the blog of Nic and Megan Olson: Colombian Brewed. They are a couple from one of our supporting churches in Minnesota, and already have adopted two Colombian babies. The amazing thing is that they are working towards adopting a sibling group of children between 0-10 years of age. We consider it a privilege to know Nic and Megan and pray that God would bless them richly in this new adventure.