Saturday, April 05, 2008

Refuge

We all need a place of refuge. A place where we can go to be safe. A place where we can go to be healed. This past Thursday our project visits continued with a visit to one such place. We visited a foundation called “Adulam”. Which means “Refuge”.

This is a foundation in El Alto that ministers to those who live on the streets.

5 homes.

One for boys ages 13 – 18.
One for girls ages 15-28 (and their kids).
One home where they give the youth technical training in a wide variety of fields. (Because it is not just about helping the kids transition off of the streets…it’s about giving them tools and training that will help them all their life.)
One home where they give the youth educational training, have talks, events, activities, etc…
And one home that is going to open sometime this year that will just be for couples. These will be couples suffering from some form of addiction and if they have kids they can bring them as well.

Lots of amazing ministry and work being done. A strong spiritual component to this ministry as well. They attend church on Sundays and they also fast on Fridays. And Christ is at the center of it all. Nice.

Through my whirlwind tour of projects over the past 3-4 weeks I have really come across some strong ministries. Ministries that I really want to help from a marketing perspective and ministries that are definitely in need of help. This foundation “Adulam” that I just visited is a great example. In fact, I am meeting with the director of the foundation next Tuesday because she wants me to help them brainstorm and create some new promotional materials for the foundation and they are also producing a book and she would love for me to provide some advice and suggestions for the design of the book.

I tell you. God is just giving me so many cool experiences lately. Some of these experiences still feel surreal. I mean…last year I was sitting in a cube promoting plays and musicals and this year I live in a third world country, I visit poor cities, I sit in offices and try to think of ways to promote ministries that are reaching out the “least of these”.

I still can’t believe that I am here. And the more I settle into this marketing role the more I feel like I am right where God wants me to be. And the more peace and joy I feel. Visiting all of these ministries has been a very eye-opening process and I have learned a lot.

I can’t wait to see what next week holds.

P.S. I am just going to leave you with one final thought. This is something I just found out about. I have been learning more and more about prison ministries here and I was told that there are ministries that go into the jails just to minister and do activities with the kids there. Yes…the kids there. There are kids that live with their parents in jail because they have no where else to go. Maybe this happens in the states I have no idea but the idea of a kid living in a jail is blowing my mind right now and I am going to get to the bottom of it. My plan is to visit a jail as soon as possible to see what is going on with these kids. Can you imagine? Just take a look at your kids and thank God for the environment that they are in. Just remember that there are kids their age out there whose idea of growing up doesn’t involve McDonalds, Chucky Cheese and ballet practice…it involves a jail.

They are so young yet they already know what it feels like to be in prison.

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