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Hi there everyone!!!

Well… there have been some random thoughts drifting through my head… they aren’t related… nor do they follow any special theme… they are just…  random thoughts… that might give you a few more peeks into life and ministry here…

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Jennifer… or Jenny… or sometimes I call her Patty (my nickname for her)… is only a year and a half old… she has big, black, expressive eyes… when she smiles, her whole face lights up… a little dimple appears in her cheek when she giggles and smiles… It makes you want to hug her, love her and squeeze her tight…

Last Sunday Marco and I went to Mariela’s “house” to visit…  A little girl was sitting in the doorway…  Dirty, her tummy peeking out from her too small of shirt, head down, she turned her face a bit to be able to glance at me…  What broke my heart was the incredible sadness, emptiness in her eyes and her face…  It made me want to hug her, love her and squeeze her tight…

How could such a little girl be so sad!!!  How could eyes so young be so dull and hopeless?  I looked a little closer…  Jenny?  What was Jenny doing at Mariela’s house (27 kms out of the city)?  This was my little friend?  I picked her up… she didn’t reach out for me nor show any emotion…  She just quietly laid her head on my shoulder…

So… I hugged her… loved her… and squeezed her tight…

Jenny’s mom (Rocio) is back on the streets…  You can see that life and its consequences reflected on this baby’s face… It shouldn’t be!  It’s not fair!  But it is a consequence to sin… consequence of living life the way YOU want to live it… 

With a bit of love and a nice little bath, I saw those eyes brighten a bit… the smile come back… although not completely…  …but we were only there for a short while… we had to leave little Jenny… waiting… waiting for her mom to come from the streets to pick her up…  sigh…

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A couple years ago a few of our students came to ask me a question…  How long could they keep on coming to El Jordán? …because El Jordán was a place for people who wanted to CHANGE… and they had changed…  so could they come… maybe as volunteers?

They had some of the requisites to be volunteers… a relationship with Christ… practical skills to teach to others… but I felt that they needed to have a deeper knowledge of the Word of God… and to be a part of the local church…  We want our volunteers to be able to lead and guide others using the word of God…  so I suggested a Bible class to them… In every class at El Jordan we have a small devotional… but this would be setting aside a morning or afternoon… just to study the Bible…  María Luisa, Marina, Sandra and Brenda, have been coming faithfully coming to study God’s word for 2 and a half years now…

Other girls showed interest in just studying God’s word… so the next year we started a new class with the “new” girls…  …so I have 4 regulars in that class…  At the beginning of this year, more girls wanted to study… and rather than mix the groups… we now have three different levels of Bible Study…

In my “newest” class, most of the girls came in with very little Bible knowledge but with a real eagerness to learn… a few, but not all, have put their trust in Christ…  I love to see them learn… they sometimes get frustrated because they don’t understand and I keep asking them questions to get their minds moving… but then their eyes will light up as something sinks in…  These girls, although newer and less stable, and even though this class offers no financial benefit ( come very faithfully to their class… and two of them have started bringing their sisters along…

Patricia, a new Christian, has been struggling to make ends meet.  With her mom, she has been making empanadas (little meat or cheese pastries) to sell first thing in the morning…  They have been making about 100 every morning…  Patricia gets up at 3 in the morning to prepare everything… Getting up at 3 wasn’t going to give Patricia enough time to make it to Bible Study on Friday morning... so she got up at 2 in the morning so that she could still be on time for Bible Study!!!

Please pray for these girls… that the Word of God would speak to them… take root in their lives… grow and produce fruit…  That we will continue seeing changes in them… change that grows out of inward life rather than external pressure!

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I have to admit… I really didn’t like Monica…  Not at all…  She would make me so mad…  One of our students, Ruth, a single mother of three little kids, was struggling to change… BUT her friend, Monica, wouldn’t respect that…  Quite a few times when I dropped by to visit, the kids would be alone…  Ruth’s mom would be upset…  Ruth was out drinking with “that MONICA” again… and she didn’t come home… AGAIN…  

Monica’s daughter fell out of a tree and seriously broke her leg one day when her mom wasn’t home… but that wasn’t enough to make her change…  She kept up her “wandering”… her drinking… and her friendship with Ruth…

I had talked to Monica several times… but there really was no interest there...  She would always say that she was going to come to El Jordan... but she would never come… she just kept drinking, neglecting her two daughters, and taking Ruth along with her…

One day, when she was still a little drunk, Ruth convinced Monica to come to El Jordán for our graduation… At the gate, Monica almost balked… but when she finally came in and sat down, something happened…  Monica felt very dirty… and that this place she was in, was so clean…  She thought she stood out… that everyone could see her filth…

That was the day Monica knew she needed to change.

Monica started coming to classes about three months ago…  She is one of the sweetest girls we have…  After Bible study one day she wanted to borrow a Bible to read the verses that she learned at El Jordán… but when she asked a neighbor who is a Christian to please lend her his Bible for a while, he refused…

Please pray for Monica… that she will come to understand and grow in this new life she has found…  Her girls are thrilled to have their mom around… and she is finding such joy in being at home and taking care of them…  Her dad wants to know what happened to her!!!  Monica was so happy last week when her dad trusted her enough to ask her to pick up some merchandise in another city…  He wouldn’t have trusted her to go to the corner store with 25 cents before!!!  …so she was very excited.

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There are times when we try to teach things to our students… and it doesn’t seem to sink in…  nag… nag… nag… We try and do it in a nice way… but that’s what it feels like we do…  clean up after your class…  the bathrooms are YOURS, help clean them… we don’t want to hear rumors here…  we don’t want to hear you talking behind other people’s backs… and on and on and on… 

We were having so many problems between the girls… ‘she said this’ … ‘she said that’… and nothing we did or said seemed to help…  Another problem that we have is keeping up with the cleaning and organizing of our place… It is bigger than what it used to be… and even with extra help it is hard to keep on top of it all…

Well… we have had a surprising turn around…  At the beginning of May we had an evaluation meeting with volunteers and students… evaluating our exposition and things in general…  We were talking about clean up after the exposition, that really it needs to be everyone’s responsibility… when one of the girl pipes up and said… “We should really clean not only after the exposition… we should really help clean El Jordán on a regular basis too… after all… this IS a place that is for us… and our benefit!!”  

Even though we had been trying to push the SAME idea for SO long… it just didn’t catch on until the idea came from them…  They all got excited about it… and started signing up to clean…  “I want to come once a month…” “Put me down for two times a month…” and in a few short minutes, I had a list of girls and how many times they wanted to come each month to help clean.

This has helped us in our cleaning… but it has also done wonders for the relationships between the girls…  They have a chance to work together, have fun together… pull TOGETHER instead of apart…  They clean floors, bathrooms, our meeting room, shelves, the kitchen… anything that they are asked to do…  they have been a great blessing to us… 

I’m so glad they thought of it!!!  =)

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I was washing my dishes the other day… cups to be more exact…  and a little thought flashed through my mind…  The girls from El Jordán, even though they were told that the only gift we wanted for our wedding was their presence and their good wishes, brought us gifts…

They, who might not have two matching cups, or ones that aren’t scratched, cracked or crooked… gave me… sets of matching cups… mugs… even pots and pans…  me… who choose whether to drink out of my big mug or small mug… my green mug or my Saskatoon berry mug… or whether to serve the lemonade in the green plastic cups… the “nice” cups... or the clear plastic cups… 

How humbling…

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Well… my random thoughts could randomly keep going for longer… but I’ll leave it at that for right now…

For the people who have been praying about the difficult situation here… THANK YOU…  God has heard your prayers… and I believe this whole situation is going to turn out for more glory to God… and a better service for Him…  The Bible talks about discipline as not being very nice at the time… but if you are willing to learn from it and be trained by it, it produces fruit of justice and peace…  It looks like we’re going to have a harvest here at El Jordán.

Please continue to pray… the devil doesn’t sleep… (but nor does God!!!)

God bless…  Thanks again!!!

Lots of love,

Corina