Calle 5 #14-32
La Mesa, Colombia
aaronlaurak@gmail.com
Final Stretch
Dear family and friends,
Hello from La Mesa! We have been in a very busy stage of the church and school life and figure it's about time we described a little of what we've been doing.
Last Saturday we traveled with the youth group to an outside neighborhood of La Mesa, called Santa Barbara to do a children's outreach program with the community kids. We had received permission to use the little green school building for the outreach. The youth group kids played informal soccer and group games with the community children while Martin and others worked to set up the projector equipment. Martin forgot to bring a very-needed extension cord and 3 prong adaptor for the sound system and video projector. Some other adults from the Saturday missions institute came with us, one man, German, being an electrician. So he went to work scraping and wiring cables together, in a very typical Colombian way of creatively "making do" with what was available.
The youth group then presented two well-performed short dramas for the children. The kids followed along enthusiastically and seemed to enjoy the comedic acting and the positive messages of the dramas. Martin distributed coloring and work-books to children who correctly answered his Bible-trivia, eventually making the questions easy enough for all of the children to receive one. After working so hard to set up the projector, the DVD wouldn't play correctly, so we moved on to singing together, and sharing small candy bags with everyone. Overall, it was a fun experience learning to know a new area and especially meet the families and children.
We bumped and curved around back up to La Mesa, and prepared for a Saturday evening graduation ceremony of the Arise and Shine Missions Institute. Aaron taught World Religions and English to these students in the past year. At the ceremony he presented special music and led the closing prayer. Many of the institute students are from La Mesa Mennonite, so it was a fun time of sharing together over empanadas after the official ceremony.
Sunday Aaron preached his 4th sermon in Spanish, both at the morning and evening service. He spoke on "Running the Race of Faith" and included in the Power Point, photos of himself running different phases of a marathon. He's finding that each sermon feels more comfortable, and not as draining, even though they continue to be about an hour long! This was a full sunday as the youth creatively presented dramatizations of Biblical characters and the children had special music.
On Monday morning, we warmly received our Director, Linda Shelly and Dean Heisey, also from MMN, into our home. We shared a wonderful two days with them, with many meaningful conversations reflecting on our time here and looking forward to what the future holds. We were encouraged by her affirmation of our work here and enjoyed introducing Dean to small-town Colombia.
After a busy weekend and hosting, it's a little hard to muster up the energy for the work at school and for the youth group retreat this coming Sat. afternoon to Monday afternoon. We're planning on going to a church about 1 1/2 hours away in the country to have a "spiritual retreat" for the youth. The pastor and her two daughters will lead us in worship and meetings throughout the time, and we will also do some group-building activities. We'll be taking about 30 youth and plan to stay in the church building. We discovered this past Monday that there's only one bathroom there! The plan is for Martin to take the guys to the river to bathe each morning while the women share the shower head in bathing suits! :)
During the next two days Elsy and Laura will be buying the food for the weekend and we'll all be pulling together last minute details. Please keep this event in your prayers - that it would be a meaningful and rejuvenating time for the youth and that us as leaders would have the energy and stamina for being with 30 young people.
In other news, Laura decided to take advantage of the inexpensive (yet quality) orthodontic care and got braces on Oct. 11th. The following week she had two teeth extracted to free up some space in her mouth. So the past two weeks she's been chewing rather tenderly and learning about life with braces. We've found that it seems more common to see adults with braces here in La Mesa, so Laura doesn't feel as conspicuous as she thought she would. Thankfully, they are starting to feel more "normal" in her mouth.
Abby continues to delight us with new words and phrases. On October 21st she said "I love you" for the first time! We also enjoy watching her creatively play with her dolls and stuffed animals. Some of her favorite activities are coloring, reading books and walking around the back yard with us. She will turn two years old on November 12! We will actually be traveling to the city of Cali November 10-13 to be with MCC couple Chet and Holly Miller-Eschleman and to be at the MCC-sponsored HIV/AIDS conference. We look forward to seeing a new part of Colombia and being with friends. When we return to La Mesa we'll also hold a birthday celebration with our close friends here. They don't want to miss out on Abby's birthday!
The school year is winding down. There are two weeks of classes left, then some weeks of faculty meetings. It's hard to believe we'll be finished with our first school year a month from now. Then on December 15th we fly to United States for the Christmas season! We're very much looking forward to this time to reconnect with family and friends. I'm sure it will go all to quickly, but we're planning to enjoy each of the 19 days there as much as possible.
Blessings to you all and thank you to those of you who continue to write us from time to time. We love to receive news from you!
Laura, Aaron & Abigail