Life and Death Campaign.

I almost forgot about posting a blog today! We did two campaigns this weekend so we kept pretty busy over here. On Friday I had the opportunity to be a piece of living art in our Life and Death Campaign.

Since it was good Friday we thought it was the perfect timing to do a little bit of a darker campaign. We caught people's attention with our art display and then asked them to grab a flower petal and write what they believed would happened to them after they died. It seems a bit of a heavy topic to talk with strangers about but the fact is that one day we will all die, no matter what your beliefs are everyone can agree on that one thing. We just challenged people to really examine why they believe what they believe about the afterlife.

No matter what you think happens (or doesn’t happen) when you die, when you pause to reflect on this truth there are always a few things that come to mind:

Death can motivate us to live.

Life here on earth is short, or as the bible so aptly puts it in James 4:14, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away.” When we reflect on the fact that one day we will die we can find purpose in the way that we live each day.

Death makes us question what we believe.

When we ponder the mystery of death we grapple with the stark reality that we could be wrong about what we think happens when we die.  It’s easy to say pat answers like, “I don’t believe in anything.” Oddly enough, even that statement in itself is a belief. All of us have beliefs and those beliefs will one day lead us somewhere...the question is where?

So those are the topics we spoke to people about during the entirety of the campaign. I myself did not get to have conversations with anyone because as you can see I was an actual piece of the campaign. I stood still just like in the pictures above for 2 hours while the rest of my team held conversations with people who stopped to take notice of what it is we were doing. From where I stood though I could still hear lots of conversations going on, there was a crowd gathered the entire 2 hours we stood there. It was really neat to just sort of be a fly on the wall and watch the whole campaign unfold. This was a brand new campaign and our first time doing it and overall I would say it was a success. You never know how people are going to react to things when they have never been done.

On Sunday we did our 'Pixel Campaign' which I am editing photos from tonight so I will post about that one later this week!

Don't wait for an invitation to start dreaming.

Saturday for our GOYO (go on your own) ministry we took a soccer ball to the historical plaza where many young boys spend their days shining shoes to make money. We kind of stood around for a while not really knowing how to engage the children we saw walking around. We finally decided to just pick a spot and start kicking the ball around with each other and see if any kids looked interested in playing and then we could invite them to play with us. It's funny how we sort of over analyzed the whole situation and made ourselves think it was going to be much more complicated to get some kids to play with us then it was. As soon as we kicked the ball around we had 3 or 4 kids instantly start playing with us. We ended up getting kicked out of that spot by the cops but that didn't stop us, the kids led us to another area where we could play soccer together (where we also eventually got kicked out of too)

I was just thinking about how the kids immediately jumped in and started playing with us. They didn't wait for an invitation, they saw an opportunity and grabbed it. We have been learning a lot about dreaming recently and how kids don't have to be taught to dream. When you ask a child what their dream is or what they want to be when they grow up they usually will answer you very confidently. They don't need to be convinced that they are capable of their dream, as a kid anything is possible. As we get older though we start encountering 'dream crushers' whether it be people, obstacles or the reality that pursuing our dream won't be as easy as we thought. I think we then get into this habit of waiting. Waiting for the right opportunity to fall in our lap, waiting to meet that certain someone, waiting for our dreams to be handed to us. It's as if we are waiting for an invitation to pursue our own dreams. We need to be like these kids, see an opportunity and grab it. Look for opportunities, don't wait for them to happen.

Don't wait to be invited to start living your dream. Just start.

Last Saturday in Otavalo

Last weekend we had the privilege of visiting an aids orphanage in otavalo. The orphanage is about 2 hours away from where we live so we spent most of the day there. This is the same orphanage we visited while I was on the justice tour last summer. You might remember me writing this post about this little girl last year after I returned from my trip to Ecuador.

She never spoke and so I never learned her name while I was there last time. Well as you can see from the picture above she was a much different child this time. A much healthier and happier one!

I was finally able to learn her name was Lizbeth! We were all given chores to do when we first got to the orphanage and I was outside washing some toys when she came out of the house and started playing in the yard, then her and another little girl Leslie came over and started helping me wash the toys. They were enjoying helping me scrub all the toys and listening to me try to speak Spanish.

We had so much fun, needless to say we did not fully finish our chore :/ whoops!

We spent part of the afternoon just playing with all the kids after they finished eating lunch. It's very bittersweet going and volunteering at an orphanage. It's great to be there and love on them, play with them, and just give them undivided attention for a while but it's also hard because these aren't kids who when you leave go back home to their parents. For a little while you almost forget they are orphans, that is until you get ready to leave. When it's time to say goodbye it kind of hits you again that all these children are sick and have no parents to raise or love them. All the children have such different reactions to saying goodbye too. Some won't let you go and follow you all the way to your car to yell goodbye at you because they had so much fun playing, while others, like Lizbeth did, just shut down once you tell them you have to leave. I tried to tell Lizbeth goodbye but she wouldn't even hardly look at us once we said we were leaving. I'm glad I get to love on these kids even if it's just for a little while but it's always so hard to say goodbye. I mean look at all these precious faces!

I'm really hoping we get the chance to go visit again while we are here. My heart for orphans has grown so much more since I have been here, hoping I can use my life to make a difference in the lives of orphans.

-Jamie