Dear Friends,
The last two years have been strange ones for us. It seems that God keeps asking us to do bigger and more "risky" things. I say risky in quotation marks because anything that God asks us to do requires no REAL risk; in His eyes it is guaranteed, but to us it can be and usually is... terrifying!
Last year, our 5 week Canadian Outreach was the big one. Taking 30 Colombians to your home province to minister in all of the churches that you have contact with and a few new ones, is ministerial suicide if things go badly.
This year was the time to do the same in Bogota. God laid out a local outreach that was so big our ministry reputation would have suffered for years had it failed and in Latin America reputation means a lot.
What our boss Carlos proposed was the following: while we have done several medical mission teams to remote regions, this time our target was to be the ghettos of southern Bogota, Bolivar City. Also, we were to do this outreach simultaneously in two different neighbourhoods over two days, ie we needed to duplicate all of our services. To top it off we would need to enlist the cooperation of several of the biggest churches in Bogota, some of whom had never worked together before.
Hoping to raise up some 200 volunteers, we were getting nervous when we only had 100 people show up to our largest organizational meeting; not nearly enough to handle the expected demand. However, the night before the outreach at our last meeting on May 29th, God poured out far beyond our expectations and we arrived in Beautiful Flower and Cazucar with over 400 volunteers, among them 250 professionals: psychologists, therapists, doctors, carpenters, veterinarians, lawyers, electricians, and many others.
Our evangelistic teams dedicated themselves to sharing the Gospel with the people as they waited in line for consults.
Other teams held church style meetings with evangelistic messages and modern worship, while teams of children’s workers presented puppet shows, clowns, played games and others activities.
At the same time, medicines were dispensed and we were able to distribute new and used clothing and even furniture.
At last count we finished the Medical Outreach with the following results:
Eight of the largest churches in Bogota officially participated.
SIX METRIC TONNES of food, clothing, furniture, medicine and other donations were distributed.
Over 3400 people were taken care of by our team of professionals in 25 different areas from Medicine, to Counselling, to Beauty and many more.
Over 500 people made a decision for Christ and will be discipled by local churches.
We will be holding our next Medical Outreach in November to water the seeds planted last May.
Donated Medicine
Celebrate Christmas 2008
- The first week of August we were privileged to have James & Colleen Guskjolen visiting us. They are the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada’s (AOG Canada) Regional Directors for Latin America. As we are Associate PAOC Missionaries they wished to visit our work, encourage us and see how we might partner better in the future. It was a great week and we are looking forward to some of what God spoke to us.
Carlos with volunteers in our "Tent City" of workers.
- As I write this newsletter we are working with a team of short term missionaries from Kingsville, ON. For the last three weeks we have been in and around Bogota working with Children’s programs.
Beyond their dramas, songs and practical work, like painting; they have also touched many children through powerful testimonies that have helped several kids deal with abuse in their lives. We want to thank them and the congregation of Kingsville Community Church for their service and sacrifice.
- Our trip through the US this year went very well. We were privileged to visit several churches, minister in a Vacation Bible School, be on Christian Radio talk shows, go camping, see the Atlantic & Pacific oceans, see whale sharks, bears and even elk up close. Thank you so much to all who showed us such great hospitality.
