febuary update

once again i've let too much time pass without writing an entry, so for that i apologize. if i remember correctly the last enty i made was back in decemeber. much has happend in the last two months, so here goes.

first off, david, the eleven year old boy that came to live with us around the begining of december, decided to leave the second week of january. as it was with ferney, the 8 year old boy that was with us for two months prior, our month and a half with david was a challenging time. a little background on david: he has lived most of his life with a woman who is not his biological mother, but nonetheless has cared for him greatly and rescued him from an abusive father and unloving homelife. however, she does not have a stable job, and makes only enough money to pay the small nightly fee for her habitation by cleaning houses in the neighborhood. for this reason, she was unable to continue providing for david, and decided to entrust him to our ministry with the understanding that living with me would be a temporary first step before being committed to long term by the ministry and placed in a family with a small group of kids.

unfortunately he was not able to understand that we were the best option for him, and decided to run off with a few of my things and leave for whatever other option he may have had. my fear at the time was that his only options were the streets, where he would quickly fall into drugs and gangs, or the governemnt social services program, which he had previously been placed in 12 times only to run away each time, which in all probability would only lead to the streets as well. fortunately, after an afternoon of fun with the money he made from selling my ipod, he decided to return to gloria's house, who agreed to keep him for the weekend while it was decided what would be done. in the end it was david who decided to run away from our house and we decided we could not take him back. he had not shown us any desire to change or to take advantage of the opportunity he had with us. gloria then handed him over to the government social services program, where as expected, he made a quick escape and once again showed up at gloria's. refusing to see david sucked into a life on the streets, she again decided to take him in and do everything possible to save him. he has since been with her and is now attending our school called "luc y vida" or "light and life".

i have not had a kid living with me since david, and instead have begun working at "el otro camino" or "the other way", which is sort of like a kindergarden. for four days a week we take our bus to a community of recylers called Colombianita, and bring back around 20 kids to work with for the day. honestly, it has been a welcomed respit from the responsibility of careing for someone 24 hours a day, and i'm rather enjoying it. however, thats not to say that i may not find myself in a 24 hour care position sometime in the near future. coming to colombia, it was my hearts' desire to invest in a child full time, and that still remains.

for three weeks in january, tyler and adri both got to go the amazons to help translate for a ywam outreach team. the amazons. what else can i say. it would have been an amazing opportunity to see the jungle of the amazon, visit peru and brazil, trek through rain forrest, swim with alligators and piranahs, visit tranquil villages, meet amazing people, and share the love of god, but.....maybe another day. matter of fact, yes, another day i will go.

the outreach team came back to bogota along with tyler and adri, and spent a month around the city visiting various ministries and programs that work with kids at risk. while tagging along i got the opportunity to test out my translating abilities, which i found really struggle when i'm infront of a crowd. practice practice practice. it reinforced the fact that i need to continue to study and do as much talking and reading in spanish as possible. it doesn't help that i work with mostly english speaking volunteers.

salsa dancing. for those of you that know me, you might have a hard time imagining me dancing to salsa music. maybe you don't know what salsa is, but it's something very specific. there are moves. and i think i've learned a few of them, or atleast i'm on my way to becoming a passable dancer (hopefully more than the "tree" that i was once labled by a good friend who first got to enjoy my moves in december) by getting together with the rest of the volunteers to practice with real colombians. needless to say it's humorous to get eight gringos together trying to move and dance like real latins. but i think we do okay. getting better for sure. and its fun once you get the hang of it.

a few weeks ago, i made my first trip to cazuca, a neighborhood that tyler has been visiting on saturdays to work with mary, another volunteer in our ministry. first, i'd like to say a bit about cazuca, then a little about mary. cazuca is a community of tens of thousands of people, many of whom who were displaced due to the war and forced to what once was a vacant mountainside situated in the southeast corner of bogota. it is mostly made up of makeshift shacks or small block houses, and there are no paved streets. it is currently controlled by a paramilitary group which collects its own tax, enforces curfews, instills fear, and generally does anything it wants to controll the people including kidnapping and killing. to give you an idea of the degree to which the bogota city police fear this particular paramilitary, mary said that not long ago on a saturday afternoon she passed a military tank on a street corner with two national police in full armor, unwilling to leave the saftey of the armored tank. over the past months, the police have gradually been working their way up the mountain into the community, but its a slow and dangerous process. which would lead you to believe that for a 65 year old austrailan woman to be working alone, in cazuca, one of roughest parts of bogota, would be crazy. well, it is, but sometimes that's what god calls his people to do. so, a little bit more about mary. as i've already mentioned she is a single older aged austrailan woman, dedicated to serving the poor and oppressed. she is the greates example i have in my life for what it means to obey what god calls us to do as christians. this past december she took her work in cazuca one step further and decided to purchase a house and move there. "what? are you crazy? you have so much courage, i hope to have your courage someday," i said to her. she quickly responded in a soft spoken voice, "i don't have courage, i just obey." this hit me like a ton of bricks. i had never heard someone respond to a question of courage in this way. to mary, its not a matter of mustering up the correct amount of courage, or even asking god to provide the courage, its simply a matter of obeying the call of god, and responding with action. for her, that meant purchasing a house and starting an after-school study program for kids in one of the most dangerous parts of bogota; cazuca. enough said. she is my hero.