Step team of 4!
Santa Marta, Colombia.
On the 5th of March a team of 4 young Christians arrived from London to Bogotá as part of the Latin Link program called "Step". This program is design for people to go as a group to help churches or christian social projects. This particular team planned to stay in Colombia for seven weeks and then go to Ecuador for another seven.
I picked them up at the Airport at 4:30 am to take them home and have some rest after a trip of 11 hours from Heathrow. The plan was for them to stay at Bogotá for 3 days and then fly to Santa Marta where a vineyard church in the outskirts of the city was waiting for them to help them to build a contention wall for the rain to protect the church building.
This church is located in a hill where is no running water, dusty streets, loads of houses are made of wood in a weather of 33/35 C. So now you can imagine that doing physical work was not the easiest job! But the team since the beginning had the greatest attitude towards the work and their mission.
The first two days in Santa Marta the team have the chance to just adjust to the weather, meet the key people in the community, keep overcoming the Jetlag, get some food and get use to live with no much water. (The community has the opportunity to get some water every 2 weeks from a pipeline that comes from the bottom of the hill. The family of the pastor (4 people with very limited resources) built a tank to store the water, so we had to be careful because we were 5 including me and they were hosting another 2 people! so with 11 people living there we didn't want to be a burden for them!! )
After those 2 days, the work started building some "stairs" to get more easily to the top of the hill where the wall is going to be. It was very important because of the need of take all the materials there and our own safety. As well we started to dig a trench 50 cms deep for the foundations of the wall. Being people from the city, not use to this kind of work blisters came out very soon! bless them!
But everything was not work! with the fresh breeze of the evening we were staying till very late playing cards with the pastors family and having loads of laughts! Even when the language was a barrier, games and laughter was a big bridge between them! And the kids of the community are loving them! they arrived after school to skip the rope together and play twister!!
I´m so proud of them! i went back after five days to Bogotá, super tired but very happy to leave them in really good hands (the pastors are so caring an loving!!) and knowing that they are going not just to work in the construction but spend some time with the community. At the airport Abi was waiting for me with Chloe as a surprise! it was so nice to see them!!!
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