humidity, mosquitoes, and children

so as of tuesday, we officially were divided into our outreach teams! my team to colombia is composed of twelve students and our two leaders. Jenna, our fearless leader, is fantastic and fun, super passionate, and kind of wonderful. Joel is her assistant leader, and his passion is ministering to turtles. we have six guys and six girls. our team is wonderful. tonight we had our first team meeting, and one thing we had to do was share a few of our strengths and weaknesses. i was amazed how balanced our team is! it seems like every time someone said a weakness, someone had a strength to counter that! everyone is so strong in their faith, and just really loves people. it's going to be an incredible time, i can see that already. we've been praying about the theme of our trip, like what God's heart is for us in this time. and we got this verse that has become our theme verse for the trip.

"and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." -Romans 5:5

we were told most of our itinerary for the trip. we'll spend the first three weeks in Pereira. we will be working with a local church that is starting a new church plant. we'll be doing lots of things including going into orphanages and working around town. we get to spend christmas and new year's there, and i'm so excited to get a different holiday experience! then in early january, we'll head south to Leticia. our biggest thing while we are there will be working alongside a medical team to put on a medical brigade. we are basically handed all the kids for two weeks and get to do whatever we want! they're expecting between 80-100 kids that we get all day for two weeks! we'll do games, dramas, stories, face painting, even a soccer tournament! on the 26th of january, we will hop on a boat and go on a 6 hour ride down the amazon. we'll make our way in peru and spend a week in some remote villages. this is the only christian organization the villagers let in because they offer medical help. we'll be roughing it ywam style. no showers, no bathrooms, lots of mosquitoes! exciting, huh? we'll then head back to Pereira and do a few more things there for a week. it's an incredible trip to be had! 

and here is a team picture! it was an informal picture for our contact down in colombia, so we'll get an official one soon! from left to right, in the back we have jeremy, brady, taylor, caleb. the middle is emery, me, jenna, kelci. and in front is hannah, maria, joel, and kara. 

I'M SO EXCITED!