Our mission trip to Panama went awesome. We ended up deciding about a week before leaving that we were going to leave Jonah at home. Due to a few things changing with our trip, we felt that he would be safer up at Grammy and Papas house. You all should click on the link for their blog to see how much fun he and they had! Here is a quick overview of our trip: check out this site for an awesome video of our trip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZggHuF6IOM
Saturday - we traveled all day and everything went smooth. We stayed at a hostel in Panama City that first night.
Sunday - we traveled by bus out to Santa Catalina. It took about 7 hours of driving. We played Darren's ipod, though, and it was full of goodies like: Mariah Carey and Phil Collins. Check out the video below:) We got settled in to our little cabins and they were awesome! We were up in the rainforest overlooking the ocean.
Monday - we woke up in our absolutely adorable little cottages, ate breakfast, had some devotional time, worship time and prayed. Then we gathered up some kids from the village and took them down to the beach. We spent some time playing and teaching them to surf. We then walked back to our homebase and ate dinner at the church that we were partnering with in Santa Catalina. The dinners were so good, usually fish or chicken and beans and rice. Seriously amazing food! We sat up on the deck of one of the cottages and worshipped, talked about our day, and then we were off to bed.
Tuesday - breakfast again, devotional time, and worship. Then a group went into the village and stopped in at people's houses to pray for them and give them bibles. I was in the group that walked up on a beautiful hillside to pray over the village. We prayed for the sexual deviance problem (rape and incest), the drug problem, the kids, the church, and for God's Kingdom. Then we all met back at our cottages and ate lunch together. After lunch we went out into the village and gathered up all the kids and we played volleyball, frisbee and baseball with them all afternoon. It was so fun to see how much they loved to play sports.
Wednesday - breaky, worship, devotion....then the two groups that went out on Tuesday switched. This time I was part of the team that went to do the "house visits". This was so awesome. Ryan was able to be a part of it the day before and prayed with a sick man and led him to the Lord. How amazing! Every house (or shack, i should say) we went to they invited us in and offered us their chairs. The community was extremely hospitable. We just talked with them, and asked them if we could pray for them. Most of them wanted prayer for their health. It was definately a humbling experience. Later that night, after dinner, we showed a movie at the church. The church was PACKED! The people of this village never get to see movies, so they were so excited to watch "Surf's Up!"
Thursday - we took a boat out to an island off of Santa Catalina. We spent some time painting with the kids, helping them make bracelets with a story from the bible, reading with them, playing sports with them. I was fortunate enough to be part of a team that taught a lesson on Abstinence to the older girls. We offered them an opportunity to make a promise to themselves and the Lord to commit themselves to waiting for their husband, and all of the girls made the promise! It was awesome! Later that night we showed another movie. It was a surf movie that preached the gospel. Another great turnout, and another great movie!
Friday - we all had the opportunity to go out to the Surflodge, the place that the ministry was supposed to work out of but got destroyed by a corrupt business man, and we were able to help clean it up. The guys loved having a major, physical project to help with and they made some huge progress with the clean up of the demolished building. It started to pour rain and we all just jumped in the ocean. It was so cool.
Saturday - we left Santa Catalina. The kids that had been hanging out with us all week were hanging on our bus and were so sad to see us go. I think we were all a bit more sad to say goodbye. We drove 4 hours to a town that was inside the crater of an inactive volcano. The town was called El Valle. It was breathtaking. It was so green and there were huge mountains all around us. There were rivers flowing through it, and huge cliffs covered in rainforest. Once we got into town, we went out to dinner, then came back and got settled into our rooms, then met for a debrief and a worship session...
Sunday - This was our day to just hang out with our team. We went and walked around the market and shopped, went to lunch and a group of us went on a horseback ride up a mountain in the pouring rain. It was my highlight of the trip!
Here are a few pictures
Here is Ryan and I with two of the most amazing kids! Orlando and Mira
Here is our entire team on the grassy knoll over the ocean...beautiful! We had just finished a worship session...
Here is a pic of all the kids painting pictures...
This is the deck of one of our cottages...where we did all of our meetings and worship...
Beautiful Panama...
Panamanian Baseball....woohoo!
This is a picture of the mission's Surflodge that the boys were helping clear out and clean up...
Here is a picture of what the people lived in at Santa Catalina...
