El Salvador Mission Trip, Day 1 - Lee G.
Aug 12, 2010Over the next 20 days I will be posting from El Salvador. Our group is made up of 4 college students – Greg Shaffer, Amanda Archer, Lee Givhan, and Delon Lawrence, as well as one high school student – Alyssa Bianco. Since I want to have a daily report from this mission field for you to read, I’ve asked the other participants, our young evangelists, to take turns writing about our experiences.
Here is the first one, written by Lee Givhan of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In his words…
Even before we got on the plane to El Salvador God was working miracles for our group. All day I was helping Delon look for his passport. He was getting so discouraged he had even begun planning what he would do in Philly instead of going on the mission trip. We went to the Chestnut Hill SDA church to pick up our checks for the Pennsylvania Youth Challenge that had just ended and ran into Pastor Tara. After we explained the situation she suggested we pray and during the prayer we repeatedly asked God to give Delon a vision of where the passport was. We left and when I asked Delon where he would look for his passport next he sounded unsure about continuing the search. I encouraged him to keep looking so that God could show him were it was knowing we couldn’t just pray to find it and then sit back and do nothing. Kimmy Schwirzer offered to give Delon a ride to his parents house to look and on her way to pick him up Delon tried calling her 5 times to tell her not to come but Kimmy didn’t pick up her phone. She brought Delon to his parents house and God actually gave him a vision to look under his clothes in a droor in his old room and there it was! Less than 24 hours later we were standing on an active street in El Salvador taking in our busy surroundings. Police officers sitting in cars holding machine guns out the windows, a drunk homeless man stumbling, hissing and kicking at oncoming traffic as cars swerved around him, smogs of black clouds fuming out of overraged cars rumbling down narrow roads, markets with babies lying down on tables next to fresh produce as if they’re on sale. A man with a microphone promoting a credit company made us into a spectacle for the whole street as he asked us questions in spanish and laughed at our childish answers. Stray dogs looking worn and torn wander the streets but we, the out of place gawking tourists stand out attracting stares and turning heads. It’s been drizzling and raining all day. The hospitality from our hosts is heart warming as they tell us stories, feed us food and warn us of the dangers we face in this new culture. We moved into a beautiful home on a loud small street. I stood outside again looking at the street where bulls and cows sulk lazily down the cobblestone roads as I hold my bag close to my body, mindful of pickpockets. I go inside to eat some mangos I got in the market, the most sweet and juicy mangos ever that make any mango on the USA’s grocery shelves pale in comparison. I sat in bliss with a smile on my face and the taste still in my mouth feeling like I’d just had mango for the first time in my life, thinking about all the new experiences that would await us on this journey in El Salvador and how much we would need God’s presence and guidance each step of the way. Please pray that God protects and uses us to touch hearts with his Holy Spirit.
Thank you and God bless.
Peace,
Lee G.
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