Our time in the village of Icandi, Panama continued...

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to do our morning devotionals and eat breakfast. Our breakfast was not the most appealing. We brought our own food to cook, but most of it consisted of oatmeal style breakfast cream, mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the like. After breakfast, we discussed some topics about our time there in Icandi and what we were doing there. Then came the interactive part. Our team split off into partners and headed off to different huts to see what life what like for a Kuna. I partnered up with Lindsey and we took off with a Kuna missionary to speak with some of the families that lived int he village. We first entered a hut where a woman was smoking fish in preparation of a coming out party for her daughter. We interacted with the woman and her daughter and talked the things that she was doing. We then got non-permanent tattoos from the woman of a Kuna symbol and the name Jesus on our arms. I was awesome. We did this again and again, going from house to house and helping the Kuna women with their daily chores and work. I cut a lawn full of weeds with a machete, lindsey peeled plantains and different foods, we gutted fish, swept floors, ground corn and other things that we never thought we would ever have to do. It all felt very cool and primitive for me because I got to do all these jobs that I would never have to do back in the city. The next day we went out to do more of the same thing, except we had the chance to speak with the villagers this time. We started a spiritual conversation with a Kuna woman in her hut while Pastor Lazarus translated for us. It was so interesting to see this woman's perspective on life. We started out with some simple questions about her life, but soon I asked her the question: What is your purpose in life? Her answer was "Nothing". This shocked me, I thought maybe she would mention her kids or her family or gathering food or something like that, but her answer was that she did not have a purpose in life. That was it and there was no explanation as to why she felt that way, but just decided that she didn't have a purpose in life. This worried me a little bit about the people in the village. I'm sure this lady was not the only one who felt this way about life. I'm worried though, because a life without purpose will result in a life with bad consequences. After speaking with this woman for a little while, her husband showed up and we started speaking to him. We shared the gospel with him and his wife! It was good and even though I couldn't really tell whether they were very receptive to the message, I know that the seed has been planted there. The Kuna missionaries that we were working with also had their own project in hand while we were there. They held a few meetings with the chiefs of the village and got permission to build a church in the village. This was definitely a victory because they had previously gotten denied to start building a church, but it was approved. While we were there, we also showed the Magdalene film, which is basically the Jesus film from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. It was wonderful and attracted a lot of attention from the people in the village, especially the women and children, which the film was geared towards. All in all, as we finished up our three day stay at the village, things were looking good. One of the things that hit me the most were the kids. There were so many kids jumping on us and hugging us and following us everywhere. Pastor Todd who was accompanying us and leading us in this project told us that most of these kids are so hungry for affection, and that is why they were around us all the time. It broke my heart, to see so many kids, hungry for love and as my teammate Raquel put it one day in tears: "All I could really do was just love these children with Christ's love and transmit that to them". The kids touched our hearts and it was awesome just to be there in their lives those three days and bring joy to their faces with just our presence there. We left on that third day with a big group of Kuna kids waving goodbye while we went off in our canoe back to the highway that leads to the city. Looking back now, I realize that there are so many things that happened there that I didn't expect to happen as a result of God using us there. I'm sure that peoples lives were touched there too, and I just never have come to realize that.