The past 2 weeks have been exciting! It has been so cool to see how God is orchestrating events towards growing his kingdom through Young Life in PR.
First item: In our update email a few weeks ago, Matt and I asked for prayer for a marathon weekend with kids. The first event on the docket that weekend was BLISS, the overnight fundraiser put on by Baldwin School to raise money for the Lost Boys in Sudan. It was a blast! Over 1,300 high school students from all over San Juan camped out in the soccer field at Baldwin from 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. I was acting as the adult chaperone for one of the sophomore teams from Baldwin, and got to be with kids from 11 a.m. on Saturday until the event ended on Sunday morning. It was an incredible time hanging out with the girls on my team, but also getting to see kids that I know from other high schools all over San Juan... some of whom I hadn't seen since being back from the holiday break. There was music, food, parandas, soccer tournaments and zumba classes to keep the students occupied as they took turns walking in honor of the Lost Boys. The students took 1 hour shifts and walked from station to station where they had to complete "tasks" that gave them an insight in to what the life of a Lost Boy was like. It was so fun to hang out with girls I hadn't seen in a while, meet new ones and get to have a shared experience with a lot of girls that I know but haven't been able to spend a lot of time with yet!
Sunday we rested up during the day and then headed to a high school Super Bowl Party we were invited to. It was really fun to have another opportunity to hang out with those kids in a relatively chill setting (compared to Bliss). So needless to say, Matt and I put in about 30 hours of contact work in 36 hours... it was exhausting, but God really blessed us with more relationships with kids!
That week God continued to open up doors to hang out with girls that I haven't been able to much so far... which was an incredible answered prayer. On Tuesday, the Baldwin headmaster randomly decided to give the whole school a day off. So I invited a couple sophomore girls to go to the beach with me. They had a basketball game that afternoon in Dorado, a suburb of San Juan, so we ended up driving out to the beach in Dorado and hung out all day. I was with 3 girls; one I know really well, and the other 2 are girls I've been praying for every day... that the Lord would give me time with them, that they would know Him. It was such an answered prayer to get that chance to hang out with them all day! I got to hear about their lives, their friends and just have fun. By the time their basketball game was done and I dropped them off at home, we had been hanging out for 8 hours! It was such a sweet time. Please continue to pray that God would give me more opportunities like that and continue to grow these relationships.
Don't worry... it just keeps going... one more story...
Last week, Matt and I were hanging out at Starbucks... I was doing admin work and he was tutoring one of the girls we took to camp last summer for a history test. The conversation soon turns from history to what it looks like to live out a relationship with Jesus. She has a relationship with Jesus, but the desire to really know what she believes and grow in it has been ignited in her. It was an incredible conversation to be a part of and, as a result, we're now reading through the New Testament with her. We're reading a chapter a day, and talking through it every day.... incredible. So essentially, Matt, her and I will be talking every single day for at least the next 3 years until she graduates high school, no matter what. God's goodness is unreal.
It's conversations like that that make this worth it. It's moments with kids one-on-one that make you think... "If my only purpose in PR was this... right here... it's all worth it." God is slowly moving the relationships that we have with kids from the shallow, we're fun people stage to the we're consistent, have a voice, really know them and they trust us stage. It is so humbling and awe-inspiring to watch Him continue to give us opportunities like that over and over and over.
These stories are so fun to tell, and I hope the give you a little insight in to what God is doing here in Puerto Rico... and encourage you in what God is doing wherever you are as well.... If you want to hear more stories please feel free to email me or give me a call! Thank you for continuing to pray for us....
We're having fun and things are rolling so I'll update again soon!
Much love,
Linds
