Whatever it takes to pull you in and draw you close!

                The tone for our first day was set bright and early this morning, God was working hard on us from the moment our feet hit the floor. We started the day off with breakfast and devotion.  Our devotion took place in the warm humid morning air. There was one word that stood out this morning in our devotion. “Fearless, to be and to live fearless…” what a concept to start the day!  Joshua 1:9 states “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”  Fearless, a word simple enough… but a belief that through God we could be strong and courageous, just like David as he went to face Goliath. So with our bellies fed and God leading the way, we went to church.
     “Church was like nothing I’ve ever seen or can find in the states. The people worship God with all their mind, body, heart and soul. Despite the heat they give all, play music with passion, dance, shout, raise hands, and sing so loudly. They greeted us with open arms and genuine affection and gratitude that we were there. They called us their brothers and sisters from the States. I can’t tell you how much the spirit of God is within that church but I have never felt it so strong and flowing. You don’t understand most of anything being said but can see it, the love these people have for the Lord. I learned in such a short time how wrong we worship back home and what we would call revival is everyday worship for the people of El Salvador. Here the service is an hour of on your feet praise and singing than a hour with the main sermon.

These are Matt’s words describing what an experience the servicve was:  "Sitting there listening to the lyrics of a song I couldn’t understand I was overcome with over whelming emotion and all I could think was how I wanted to praise God like that every day. Music is universal, even when you can’t understand the lyrics and through the music, rhythm, and beat God spoke. God uses whatever it takes to pull you in and draw you close."

   We broke off from the adults and did a skit with the children. We choose to act out David and Goliath; our story was translated to the children so that they would understand. After the skit we split into two groups, the teens and younger children, and did crafts with each group.

The next part of our day consisted of traveling to one of the orphanages. We began with a tour through the facility and just seeing the different groups of children that we would be working with. We mostly focused on working with the teenage girl group for the first day. We had brought them a craft project to do. The project consisted of a picture frame they could paint/ decorate and taking pictures of the girls to be placed in the frame. The focus of the girls was letting God know they were beautiful. After the craft was complete Jean told them the story from John 4:4-26 to girls. The main focus of the craft and the story was the girls understanding that they were beautiful and individually made; so that every time they looked at the photo they would remember how wonderfully Jesus had created them.

     We fed the homeless at the end of the night. We loaded up in the back of a truck with four large boxes full of a bag that had each a sandwich, juice box, apple, and bag of chips.  Feeding the homeless  isn’t something that leaves you with a good feeling. We had hundreds of bags of food and ran out in less than an hour, the need is huge. Seeing the face of a homeless man after he sees that you’ve ran out of food is difficult, seeing him hopeless and hungry for another night at the very least is terrible. It leaves you thinking even more about what God calls us to do. The “thank you”s that we received were beautiful and heartfelt, the people that took the bags of food from our hands were more than grateful to be receiving. A lesson was learned by all of us and we pray that it will continue to be. The whole day was eye opening, each part of the day in its own way. We all saw God working in different ways throughout the day. We are reminded that God is in the smallest and the biggest of things.