Journal Entry - Day 2 - Bogota, Colombia

Hello! I am so sorry I have not written on my blog in three weeks. The weeks got away from me as I worked full weeks for my three families and ran around preparing and packing for my week long mission trip to Colombia this past week.

For the next several posts this week, I will be getting off track from what I generally write, but I wanted to let all of you know how my week at Colombia went.

As a warning, many things mentioned will be hard to read because of what I saw or witnessed in Bogota, but it was such a humbling experience and gave me such a whole new perspective on life and the way that we, Americans, live life compared to other cultures.

I hope you enjoy this next week's blog posts and please leave feed back or comments on what you read. Thank you to all who read my blog.

And thus it begins:

July 1, 2012

I always read a chapter of the Bible at night, and had hoped to continue this during my week in Bogota. As you will learn, I did not, which is very sad, but I often read the Bible during another time of day, but did not journal about it.

I began this Journal entry the way I always do after reading a chapter of the Bible. On this day I read Chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes. It talked about how "All is striving after the wind; nothing is new under the sun. All is vanity." A very startling thing to read and somewhat depressing, but Solomon was very true in what he wrote. There is nothing new under the sun and many of the things we do or wish for is vanity and striving after nothing. I have especially seen this this past week as a travelled around Bogota. As an American, I began to realize that often what Americans live for has no value.

After writing down what I learned or what verses I really liked from what I read, I often pray and write my prayers down. For the sake of journaling this week, many of my entries are a combination of what I saw, heard, or even felt during my days. However, some times a prayer would slip into my entry.

But, for my first day, I will not overwhelm you by a super long journal entry, especially since I did not write a long one for this day.

"Today was so busy, fun, and sad. It was sad because of the little children, girls, we visited at a protection home for girls. This place had about 50 girls who had been pulled out of extremely bad home lives and placed in a protection home, while the families were helped to right their lives and make the home a better place. I did not know the stories that these girls have had, what they had already witnessed or what has already occurred in their young lives. It was so obvious how each girl yearned for love and someone to care for them; it was often painful to see. They were all so precious, loving, and caring to us. It was amazing to witness; they needed the love and caring, but they were giving what they had to us. They even gave us a little presentation of dances for each combined age groups. It was so fun to watch and see. I cannot wait to see them more tomorrow! I know I will cry when we leave tomorrow."

BTW I did not write down all that occurred that day at the girls home, but I will mention it now. Not only did the girls give us presentations, but we were able to play some games with them that day, then stay later than usual and sing songs around the camp fire. It was a long day, but very eye-opening and gave me much to think about. Unbeknownst to me, I did not realize how eye-opening and hard the entire week would be, but I will save all of that for a later post.

I hope this post gives you a little taste of what I witnessed last week. I cannot wait to share the following days with you all.

Have a wonderfully Blessed day!