Our second day of outreach was to Loma Bonita, which means Beautiful Hill. To be honest I saw nothing beautiful about this place- aside from the people!
Loma Bonita is a poor colonia where La Vina has built 1 of their 13 feeding centers, and has had a school and church (I don't think either are operating right now). Once a week La Vina puts on a children's ministry program and gives the children a free lunch. We learned that we would be assembling bags of food to give to each house.
As usual the morning of our second outreach we met for team devotions, walked to the church for breakfast and stopped at Sams Club. Pastor Dave of La Vina pointed to items and told us how many boxes to get of each item. Oil, corn masa to make tortillas, tomato paste, pasta, rice... After we purchased 120 of every item, we created an assembly line in the parking lot to make bags per household.
Despite the heat, I couldn't believe how FUN it was to work as a team and assemble these bags. Such a simple task, but our excitement was building as we looked forward to delivering them! Even Canaan had a task!
We got to Loma Bonita and some boys immediately greeted our bus. They promised to lead us around the colonia to the occupied homes.
We broke up in 3 teams and headed in different directions to hand out tickets for a food bag. Our sweet "tour guide" Francisco led us barefoot -that is until someone loaned him a broken pair of size 10 flip flops! He took his job so seriously!
We broke up in 3 teams and headed in different directions to hand out tickets for a food bag. Our sweet "tour guide" Francisco led us barefoot -that is until someone loaned him a broken pair of size 10 flip flops! He took his job so seriously!
At each house we stopped at we offered to pray for the families, and told them to bring their tickets in an hour to pick up their bag of food. They were so appreciative!
We treated Francisco to a cold soda from the local "store". I can't even begin to express how the 6 pesos (about 50 cents) we spent on the soda blessed us to see his enjoyment!
We soon headed back to the center of the village to begin the food distribution. 
Along with the food bags, we handed out stickers and candy to the kids, and toiletries to the moms. You should have heard us try to explain conditioner to people who rarely use shampoo!
The people seemed so trusting and open to us, and I was shocked to learn that the night before there had been a rape/murder in this village, and another family had been killed the week before (of course the pastor told us this AFTER we left).
Walking around Loma Bonita, praying for the people and meeting their needs taught me so much. We have so much to be thankful for!
No comments:
Post a Comment