Home already?

Well, that's it I guess. My summer in Colombia is over. Samuel and I arrived Wednesday with bitter sweet feelings. I was so sorry to have to say good bye. "Despedidas", or farewells have always been hard for me, but this time it was like leaving my heart behind. Now on to trying to find contentment here in the US. God has been so good this summer, faithful to teach us and train us. My only prayer is that I might be able to use what I learned through the rest of my life.

So now what? Well I will be starting my Senior year in Highschool, and hopefully getting a part time job. I hope to continue working with a ministry that my church puts on called Friday Nighters. This is a ministry where we go down town every friday night and have a school gym open for kids from the neighborhood. There we play games with them, have a short worship time, a teaching time, and a one-on-one small groups after each lesson. I am also praying about teaching a Sunday school class, but that isn't decided yet. Samuel will be starting his Senior year at Emmaus Bridal *cough* I mean Bible =P College and is living at home this year so I get to be a wonderful little sister and pester him a lot. Just kidding.

But all in all, I am really sad to have left Colombia. There is the possibility that I will go back next year, but we'll have to see where God leads me. Right now He has me in Dubuque and I have to accept that and make the most of it. Ok, so no, it's not a horrible place. But it has no mountains, and not too many Colombians =P. It's also missing good Colombian cooking and the wonderful spring weather year round.

And, as far as I go, that's a wrap on my journey through Colombia.
Thank you all so much for your prayers. I could tell they were present anytime from the journey there, when I was with a family that I didn't know too well, to when we were with kids, to when I got sick, even down to the times I really wasn't working but I was sure learning a lot. All that to say that your prayers were appreciated and evident this summer.
Thanks again,
God bless,
Christina

Here, There, and Everywhere

Hi all,
So sorry I haven't posted at all for like the past 2 weeks. After the Lopez family, I went to my old teacher's house and stayed there till Sunday the 17th. While I was at her house I basically worked at my old school and helped the librarian with everything she had to get done. She is switching jobs this summer and it looks like the head librarian isn't coming back, so she has a lot on her plate right now. Not too much exciting happened that week, not too many people were around either so it was really quiet and kinda lonely. They are, however, taring down the old school building to make a soccer field so I'll post pictures of that.
Well, after that week, I went to a friend's house to be discipled and hang out and help out with them. I had a really fun week. They have a son who was either working or helping out in some ministry so seeing him was rare.  But i really enjoyed the discipleship because we went through most of the Emmaus Course "The Call to Holiness" which goes hand in hand with "The Call to Follow Christ" (which is not an Emmaus course). It's fun to think about why we should be holy: God says "Be holy for I am holy."
Holiness means that we are separated from the world and the sins of the world. God can't be in the presence of sin, so in order to be in His presence, we need to be holy.
Well I haven't finished the course yet, but I'll let you know what I learn when I do.

But now, after a drastic switch in plans for me, (I thought I was supposed to go to a farm for kids, run by the teacher that i was staying with) I was taken back down to camp which I really don't mind. Actually I'm really glad that I'm here. So now I'm sanding and painting tables and benches with Samuel. Not what I would call "fun" but it actually is kind of enjoyable because you can think about something else, or listen to music or adventures in odyssey while doing it. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the orbital sander down so I have to do it by hand, but i'm pretty ok with that.
So now you are all caught up and so am I.
Thank you all for reading this post (assuming you actually got this far)
Christina

Tables Benches Tables and more Benches

Hi again everyone,

I am still down at Camp in Villa de Leyva. Things have been going well. These last two weeks we have been working on sanding down and varnishing all the tables and benches in dinning room. This has been a slightly bigger task than we originally thought it would be. First we didn't have any power sanders. Thankfully one of the other missionaries in Bogota had a (very nice!) belt sander that he let us borrow. Now we are working on varnishing the tables that we have already sanded. The varnish is proving to be difficult and therefore the job is going to take more time than we had hoped. The largest problem is the varnishing because I will be able to sand everything by a week from Thursday (July 28, the day before I leave camp). But the problem is that there is a group coming in on Friday evening (July 29) and they will need to be able to use the tables (at least most of them). So we need to get that done. I also need to prepare for a sermon which will be presented on July 31. So time is a little short on many fronts. Please pray that God will make us wise to know how to spend our time this next week. Finally the Mendoza family (who live here at the camp as caretakers/administrators) are getting hit with some kind of a cold or the like. That is making everything a little more difficult, so pray for the whole situation.

Thanks,

Samuel

Hi Everyone,

After a weekend in Bogota I am now back down in Villa de Leyva. Today I have been sanding with a borrowed sander and it is super great! I love having power tools that will make my work much easier and quicker. I am glad I will actually have a chance of getting the job done before I leave. :) I am a little tired right now (the sander can really pull against me), but that is expected after a good days work. :) Thanks for keeping up and praying!

Samuel

Hi everyone, I am finally getting around to posting after too long. This long note I wrote a week ago. Hope you enjoy it. :)

This last week has been a crazy one (I guess 10 days really :) ). As I have said before the leader’s camp was good. It was tough, but I liked it. Then we had a 24 hour time to rest. During that time Mr. Easter and I went around helping get the camp in order for the kids and then we had supper at the pizza place that has the room upstairs and looks from the lower part of the plaza (next to the bank) up onto the church. It was good (as good as I remember :D ) and fun to be back where we had supper last time we were here.

Then Tuesday morning started out slow, but when we found out that the bus had actually left on time (I couldn’t believe it!) we went into panic mode. We started rushing around like chickens with our heads cut off and for me that was super stressing... That set the mood for the rest of the day so I was kinda frazzled the whole time. When the kids got here and we got organized things started working out and it was fun. We did lots of activities and had lots of time in the lesson room. It rained two of the days and that was kinda hard to keep the kids in an amused mood. But things went well. I had a good group and the guy I worked with was really helpful and a solid kids camp leader/counselor. We had fun and I think the kids (at least in my cabin came away a little different than they had arrived). This all seems so long ago as I write it down now because of the camp that just finished... WOW!

Anyway, on Friday we again got 24 hours to rest and relax a little. This time Mr. Easter left and therefore we didn’t get organized to help with the cleaning of the building etc. Therefore, Christina, two of the other leaders, and I went off to town and hung out there for most of the afternoon (at the french pastry shop). Then after supper (Carmesa and Mrs. Easter cooked that night and the next morning) we went back into town and hung out there till I finished with the internet and one of the other leaders finished watching his soccer game. We didn’t go to be too early that night (really bad idea!) and the next morning we got up early. That was a very relaxed morning ad we basically waited for everyone to show up from Bogota/Duitama. When the got here we got organized as counselors (Different leadership that was much more on top of things and more capable of organizing which was very good!). Then we kicked off the real activities with a great set of games that set the mood for the rest of the weekend. That made it a great weekend and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves very much. We did lots of games as we also had 5 very sermons done by Mr. Easer and Orlando Bueno. We used the system of meditation that was taught at the leader’s camp for a workshop after each sermon. The basic idea of the system is that you look at the verse or set of verses and divide it up into sections, main ideas, words, or key words and then you ask what does it say/mean and why does it say that? You as the questions in that order so that you can have a solid idea of what the verse actually says. It worked well and I think that some of the kids caught on really well. It was fun to watch them getting their hands “dirty” in the word even if they didn’t always communicate what they learned well and/or didn’t actually get the point of each verse. I was just happy to see some progress from the first workshop to the last. So generally this weekend was a great success and I liked it a lot.

Thinking again over this last week it has been great to connect with people that I knew before and to get to know people that I have never met before. The leader’s camp was especially neat for me because of all the leaders I had never met and yet they were all so easy to talk to (partly because I am “Jim Fleming’s son” ! and also because they are all there to learn so they just drop right into subjects about the bible or about what you are doing without a single problem.) So I had lots of good, fun, exciting, and encouraging conversations that weekend. It was good to see all the leaders together with the goal of better handling the word of God and also getting together to share with each other. I also got to know a lot of kids this week and that was good too. Two conversations that I have had in the last week really impacted me; the first one I had while talking to the administrator of the camp after a lesson during kids camp. We were talking about struggles we have in the christian life and it was really neat to encourage him to keep up with what he is doing because God IS working in his life. He knows it and I could share with him some of my experience this last year of how God has been working in my life and he seemed to be encouraged knowing that what he is feeling is positive. The second conversation was with one of the counselors at the youth camp. He is a guy that knew the gospel for a long time before he really accepted the Lord as his savior (to the point that he thought he was saved). He has had struggles as a result (in his pre-salvation experiences) and he feels like he waisted those years. Now he is very active, but he wishes things were different before. So, for him it is very encouraging and motivating seeing me working for the Lord because, while he can’t change his past (and actually he accepts that God worked the way he did for a reason), he can encourage and help others who are at my stage of life take advantage of what time they do have and on top of that he can keep going in the things of God himself. So those two conversations were really neat.

Samuel

A week with the Lopez family

Hi all,
Last week as just what I needed after 3 camps in a row! It was relaxing yet I was able to work and help Erika (the mother and wife) with any and everything. I got to her house on Monday and stayed there till today when I moved in with the Byes.
Erika discipled me for the week. We went through the first three chapters in the book of Luke, learning how to mark your Bible, and what we can get out of each passage. In all three chapters the humility of Christ seemed to be emphasized. There's the obvious humility shown when he was born in a stable, but after that the angle announced His birth to SHEPHERDS - not scribes or priests. His mother was nothing special, and Joseph was simply a carpenter. The fact that John, a man who could have claimed to be Elijah or even the Christ, was humble enough to know his place and even lived in the wilderness! Jesus was then baptized by John, who was infinitely lower in position than him.
So what can I - we get out of this? If Christ was willing to go from infinite GLORY with His Father, to one of the lowest estates of the time, how much more should we be willing to scum for Him? My prayer for my life, was that God, at the end, would be able to say "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Now my prayer is that He would say "Well done my good, faithful and humble servant."
Keep me in your prayers,
Love
Christina
***Irony of the week: I asked God that He would make me a humble servant, so He brought me to my knees right in front of the white, porcelain throne. Yeah, that's right, I've been feeling sick for the past day. Pray that it would be nothing more than a little food poisoning or something. Thanks for following, Christina***

The Fear of the Lord (pt. 2)

Hi all, 
In my last post I ended telling you about kids camp- which was only for days of last week. After the kids left on Friday, teenagers ages 13-18 came for an adolecent camp. This was a really scary experience for me because I only knew 2 girls out of the 80 kids that were there, and even then I didn't really know them because they were pretty young. It was still a good experience for me, even though I felt very much alone. 
The theme for this camp was also the fear of the Lord, but we had a much deeper study. The main speaker (Orlando Bueno) did an excelent job teaching this group. To honestly have the fear of the Lord, we have to understand who He is. In the five teachings we had we learned that God is:

• God is big (HUGE), and I am nothing. Here we studied how God sees all and knows all, His eyes wander the earth looking for the righteous. Does everything I do privately and publicly glorify God?
• God is judge, I am guilty. David Easter gave this talk, and he gave the illustration of when His brakes went out while driving through Bogotá.... not a good thing. The Fear of the Lord is like the breaks of the Christian life: it's hard to live this life if we don't fear God. He also gave a tidbit of the gosple and showed how he is Consuming Fire; sending all those who reject His gift of life to an eternal suffering. 
• God is holy like a fire. Here we talked about 7 specifics. 
• The purpose of the law (Deut. 6:1-5): to Fear God and love the Lord. 
• We also learned a little bit more about the Law. Read Leviticus 19 if you want to know what we talked about there.
• The sin of A. & S. (Acts 5) What was their sin, and what happened to them?
• The steps of sin (Joshua 7:21): You see, you covet, and you take. (James 1:13-15) It attracts us, it secuces us, we sin, and we die.  
• Who do we look like? (Isaiah 8:13) Regard the Lord as Holy, he should be your fear, and your dread. "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Arrogance, pride, and the evil way; I hate." Proverbs 8:13.
• Two types of sadness: of God and of the world (2 Cor. 7:10, Matt. 27)
• And the Holiness of God. Acts 3:19 Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; 
• The next lesson was on the Lord is Master. But something that I learned more was a "recipie"for the fear of the Lord:
• You have to have a desire to follow God
• A conviction of who you are in comparrison
• And a fear of the Consuming Fire.
• And lastly we learned that God is everything, and without Him I'm empty. 

Thank you all for keeping up with me,
I had a great time at camp and am looking forward to the rest of the summer. 
Sorry I don't have any more time to write. 
Thanks again
Christina