Our Offering

Quote of the Day:

“I was just sitting here, looking out the door… And I realized,
we’re all here, living the dream together.”
~Tanner, rating his day during our evening debrief.

Wow. What an incredible day! We spent breakfast together at the church, spending time in fellowship. Tyler talked to everyone, preparing us for the day ahead. Today was our work day in a very impoverished area of El Salvador called Buenos Aires. He explained a little about what we would see in the village, and challenged us to give all of ourselves, exhaust ourselves for the cause. To say that the team rose to the challenge would be a vast understatement.

The village has started planting crops, a project started for them by a team of SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) and Agricultural students as a means of bringing some money into the community to help them get by. Our task today was to harvest crops, till soil, plant new crops, and dig new growing beds. This team of athletes consists of amazing men and women, all of which possess the heart of a servant. I never heard a word of complaining about the Salvadoran summer heat they endured while wearing jeans working in the fields, or about the amount of bugs that were eating them alive as they shoveled, tilled and planted. They simply worked, pouring their entire hearts into serving this community. Joe made a comment that you could see the team almost fighting for tools (there were not enough to go around). Those who didn’t have a tool were constantly offering to give the others a break.

The group worked so quickly that the initial crop beds were finished by lunchtime. Wally, the long term missionary I spoke of in earlier posts, looked for more work as the group ate lunch. Wally was astounded by how quickly the work was getting done, and how everyone continued to seek more ways to bless the community.

After harvesting, tilling and planting 8 more crop beds, and digging another one entirely, it was time for the church service. The people gathered together and worshiped with everything in them. It is amazing to see people with so little praise God so fervently when we live in an area in which everyone is so blessed, yet we often say nothing. The community blessed us with kind words of love and thanks for the work we had done. Thanking us for coming to work side-by-side with them, something no other team had ever done with them before.

After the service we served a spaghetti dinner for the entire village, spending hours just enjoying the company around us. The kids broke a piñata, Rick taught quite a few of them to play Frisbee, and mostly the team just spent time with the people, loving them, and being loved by them. By the time everyone was being called to get into the microbuses to go back to the apartments, no one wanted to part ways. The team wasn’t ready to say good-bye yet, and the community wasn’t ready to let us leave. They let us go with an open invitation to “return home” whenever we wished, we would always be welcome.

We created a video and uploaded it to YouTube. I’m sure everyone wishes that all of you could be here to experience this incredible journey… we hope this video will help you feel like a part of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF5G2x36F6I