Colombia post (4 weeks over due!)

Job 10:9
Remember that you moulded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?

SORRY, This post is 4

weeks over due..

Now I am back in Belfast, I am thinking back over my experience and remembering the lessons I learnt. I value the insights so much as I still have on my heart to open a new home for children in Peru, in Arequipa, the city where I was born..

This post is about the time before the Standtown Baptist team came from Northern Ireland.

When I arrived in Children's Vision Internationakl, Bogota, the kids were on a 3 week break from school so not all were at the home - they were with God-parents and mum’s and/or dad’s..

Most days we went on planned activities with the 20 or so that remained. Downtown was nice as I had not really seen the centre of the city.. we went to art galleries and parks and generally out and about.. the boys and girls all enjoyed this very much and I enjoyed it too..

My role was to be a helper with the other mentors that look after the kids. Then when school started I was to get on the rota and be a proper mentor.. I was looking forward to this as I knew I would learn a lot. I have met most of the kids before and so really got alongside them very easily. I remember the boys asking me last time I was there when I would be back and I said next year.. so it was nice to have fulfilled that.

“Mould me” this is what we say to God as we call on him to work in our lives.. I said it many times each day that I was there and now I say to him too: lead and guide.. mould me..! You know.. God did just that .. As the weeks passed in Colombia I called out more and more to God as I knew that this life of mine is not mine but God's and therefore I wanted to go and do what He wanted for me and give me guidance for the next step back in Northern Ireland..

As I looked up I prayed for God to show me the future I realised that it really would be to help kids like these, but in Peru not Colombia. So the future was getting clearer, but I know God has to work lots on me before all this.. Dismantle me to build me up in his way so that I can be more effective for Him and that He can use me in his way..

I believe as I went through the next week He showed more of his love and the need of my life to be fully dependent on Him..

2 Corinthians 4:6-8 (New International Version)

⁶For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"^]made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

⁷But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;