rise up

Its mid day and me my leader Anne and one of the other girls on my team are doing a trash clean up down our street, when all of a sudden 6 heavily uniformed men climb out of a truck. They all look like SWAT team of some sort. Then they start walking towards us. All of a sudden they pull out a point and shoot camera "photo?"

It was a very funny moment looking at these tough uniformed men wanting a picture with us. We ended up talking with them for quite a while and invited them to church which was cool. though they did tell us some sobering news about the area we wanted to reach the prostitutes in. "they will kill you for 25cent" they said. I know the devil doesnt want this to happen. At the moment I think he is trying to use fear..so its going to be very interesting.

listing of suprises in Panama:

bats

scorpians

larger than life cockroach

larger than face hairy gross spider

killer bee's

eartquake

storms

..."Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didnt see a prostitute. He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with"

When I read this it hit me straight in the heart. Revelation. THIS is how God looks at his sons and daughters, this is how I need to...how WE NEED to see our brothers and sisters and to love them.

Over the past two weeks I have been trying to figure out how we are going to reach these woman, how we are going to uncover the issue of human trafficking. how are we going to bring change? Then God spoke directly to me. This is how I love my children, now go do the same. I know this has been true from the start. Us wanting to love these people. to show Gods love but i guess amongst us trying to find the stats and figure out action plans, the simplicity gets lost.

In our small group of 12hearts we decided to stay a couple of nights in the inner city. So after a adventerous bus ride...in which the bus got pulled over by the police, who then made us all get off the bus and we had to get on another one...we then walked what was supposed to be a 10min walk and 25mins later we arrived at our hostel. The next day we split into groups and went to different parts of the city that we felt led to. My group caught an amazing taxi(who played Michael Jackson) to a part of town we had been in the other day. We walked the streets, met people talking in our broken spanish, took photos. We got to pray for one man who had been living in the centre of the square for 3months in protest to the distruction of the land where his tribe lived. I have no idea if he understood our prayer but I know God used it to impact his life. and that is enough.

We then got to visit a lady we met the last time we were in the city and had prayed for before. This time we sat down and listened to her story. It was amazing, tragic, broken....but beautiful. She is a strong woman who has lived and life with many hurts. But I can see Gods redeming hand in this and I cant wait to see what God wants to do in her life. Whether it involves us or something crazy wonderful.

The last night my friend and I stayed up and talked with a bunch of people in the hostel. One guy was really interested to hear about what we were doing and we got to share our testimony and to just speak truth into his life. It was mean as. I left him my irresistible revolution...and Im praying for him.

So anyhow we are back in the church once again and tomorow we are leaving early in the morena to go to the tribe. These people are malnourished, they are pushed to the fringes of society and they are desperate. So this could be an intense week. to show love.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.