Here is the devotion for Day 4.
The Seed – Mark 4:26 – This is a special one. It’s one we weren’t expecting. This was our devotion for the second village that we went to. It talked about how the farmer scattered seeds on the ground – God was planting seed through us in these people’s lives all week. Carrie told us that some of the people we encounter this week will not have heard the gospel before, some it will be their second, third, fourth, fifth time to hear it. But we needed to remember that God’s word will not return void and our work is not in vain.
Jesse took us to place that looked out over the village and told us how it was rebuilt and how God is working in the community. We were shocked at how good the houses looked. It really looked like all the cookie-cutter neighborhood houses that you see in the U.S. where the houses all look alike. However, Jesse said that although the houses look great on the outside, there is nothing in the inside. The houses are all the people have. He said there are about 40,000 people in the community, which we figured out equaled to about 8-10 people a house.
After Jesse finished telling us what all the church was going in the community, we headed down to where the mission was. We started setting up and the pretty much did the same thing we did yesterday morning. Face and nail painting and coloring inside and balloon animals and soccer/football/games outside.
I actually got a chance to go outside and play football a little today. It was good to be able to get outside for once, and be able to interact with the kids a little too. There is only so much interaction you can have painting faces. Although while inside, I was surprised by the number of mothers who wanted their faces painted and especially their nails painted. It was like they were getting a manicure. We were able to give them something that they’ve never had before and that was very neat to see.
Playing outside with the kids was very fun. We had a football throwing game set up and a soccer game set up. Both were made of big tarps that had a hole in them and had a soccer player or a football player painted on them. The kids would try to throw the football into the player’s hands or kick the soccer ball into the hole of the tarp.
I was very surprised by how many girls enjoyed the football game. They would throw the ball and then get back in line and throw it again. I spent a good half-hour with three girls there just throwing the ball, fetching it out of the hole, and throwing it again.
When the morning session wound down, we all gathered outside to play a game called “Gato y Raton” or “Cat and Mouse”. Everyone stood in a big circle, holding hands, and one person would be the cat and another, the mouse. The object of the game was to keep the cat from getting the mouse by either keeping the rat inside the circle and not letting it out or keeping the rat outside the circle and not letting it in. I do have to say, the game was pretty intense. Emily even hip-checked a kid but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with protecting the two-year-old she was holding.
Once we were finished playing the game, the kids went home and we ate lunch. We all seemed to mention that we didn’t feel like we were connecting with any of these kids like we had the day before. But then we started talking about our devotion that we had had that morning and how it was about planting a seed. Maybe weren’t here to make strong connections with the kids. Maybe we were here to plant a seed that would be watered and nurtured in days to come.
While eating lunch, we were informed that what we would be doing for the second half of the day was taking food and water to the poorest families in the village. So once we finished eating, we started filling bags with food and then prayed over it.
By this time the kids had returned. We separated into three groups and then members of the mission and kids joined us, as well as a translator. We all grabbed bags of food and jugs of water – I think each group had 10 of each, maybe more. I can’t remember the exact number. It was a lot. A heavy load.
One group took the bus out to houses that were along to road that led out of the village. The other two groups went to houses within the village.
As we started walking, one by one, kids would come up to us and take a bag from us and carry it. As we were struggling with it, they would take it and carry it like it was nothing.
As the afternoon progressed, we stopped at different houses that the ladies who were with us thought were the poorest families. A church member would hand them the food and water and then one of our group would pray for the food and the family receiving it, while a translator translated the prayer into Spanish. Most of people we prayed for were mothers or wives asking us to pray for their alcoholic husbands or sons or family members that were in the U.S. trying to make a living. It really was neat to just be able to go up to a person and just ask if there was something we could pray for them about, instead of pounding the gospel down their throat right off the bat. (By the way, we did stick a bible in each of the sacks.)
At one house we went to, the lady asked if she could pray for us. That was cool. She called us missionaries, which took most of us by surprise because we never looked at ourselves that way. She thanked God for bringing us there because she doesn’t have any more friends. All of her friends had died and she was so happy to be able to meet brothers and sister of the faith.
When we got back to the mission, we had to wait on the group that took the bus to come back so we got to interact with the kids for a while longer. However, this time, instead of us sharing things from our culture like football, balloon animals, and face painting, they shared things with us from their culture, like little patty-cake games, a sort of ring-around-the-rosey and more. It really was fun to see them pouring themselves into us like we had just a few hours before. You could tell that they were just happy to have new people to play with.
When the bus got back with the other group, all the kids swarmed the bus. As each person got off the bus, they had at least two kids just on them. They were so excited to see them back.
Soon we gave the members of the mission the supplies that we had brought to leave with them and prayed with the members since the pastor couldn’t be there. Then we packed up and got on the bus. It really was sad to see them go, but we got on the bus headed out, and began to share stories.
One story that sticks out in my mind came from the group that took the bus. They visited this woman’s house who had obviously injured her leg and the wound was just festering and getting infected quickly. As the group walked up to her, a lady yelled at the woman to cover her leg because these people didn’t need to see her leg like that – all bleeding and with flies around it. However, Melody, who is a physician back her in Birmingham, told the lady that it was okay and that she would like to take a look at it. Melody quickly determined that the wound needed to be treated with antibiotics, something we didn’t have with us that day. We told some people at the church when we got back and we want to make sure that she got them.
As we got back the Communion, there was another fantastic American meal waiting for us. We, of course, gobbled it down, said our thanks, and headed back to the hotel to debrief.
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