We arrived in Colombia on the night of the 4th after a long day of travel. It’s hard to believe we’ve only been here just over a week! All 43 of us are staying at a foundation/church called citiudad de refugio. We’re in the middle of the city of Medellín, but our building is huge! On the ground floor is the church, as well a bakery, vegetable stand, and thrift boutique open the public and run by the foundation. The bakery is so good, they have the best pastries I’ve ever had and it’s literally just down the stairs from me. On the rooftop is one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. We can see almost the whole city and all the mountains surrounding us, it’s even prettier at night. One side of the building houses a recovery program/ homeless shelter. The other side is where we stay. We have mattresses, working bathrooms, and a kitchen. It is so nice! Much nicer than our tents and porta potties at training camp. The people in the program work for the foundation by helping in the bakery and many other things, that way they don’t have to pay to be here. Our squad is spit into 5 teams for the 9 months, 4 girl teams and 1 guy team. Each team is assigned a different ministry job that changes every week. The first week, my team was assigned “vegetables”. We spent the week sorting, cleaning, and cutting vegetables used mostly to sell at the stand downstairs, but also used for cooking our meals. This next week we are on recycling and will be teaching English to kids. We receive 1000’s of donations of these paper bag things with plastic inside. Our job is to rip them open separate the plastic, where it will get recycled, and then we are paid by weight of what we recycle. On off days, we’ve had time to explore the city, and I already have a favorite coffee shop:) I could go on even more, I love it here, but that’s enough for now!
God bless,
Shelby
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