Los MACHOS!!

I'm back from Los Machos! In case you don't about my recent whereabouts, I was out in the Province of Cocle in this little little town called Los Machos. I would actually consider it a mountain village. If you look on this little map that we have here, you'll notice a little place called El Cope, which is located at the mid top left of the map. From El Cope, we took a couple of pickup trucks up to Los Machos. And when I say up, I mean UP! We drove for a couple of hours through steep mountain trails to get to the little mountain village where we were to minister. We crossed some pretty deep rivers along the way, and we rode through the rain, all the way to the highest village of the mountain called Los Machos. Our truck couldn't actually make it all the way up to where we wanted to go because it was way too slippery for the truck to get there safely, so we unloaded all our cargo about a 20 minute hike fromo the village. The challenge we faced the very first day was getting all of our cargo to the place where we were to set our sleeping tents. We had to carry film equipment, fourteen water jugs, our backpacks and more belongings all the way up a very very steep hill. It was extremely difficult, but after of couple of hours of carrying stuff, we finally got settled into the small area where we were staying. The land in Los Machos is beautiful. We were literally living in the clouds. We were so high up that it would often get foggy because of the clouds that were passing through our camp. It also rained a lot, but I mean a lot. Everyday was a huge downpour for us, but that didn't stop the Lord from doing his work in the lives of the people there. We initially set out to do actual manual labor type work with the people there and at the same time share the gospel with them. We also planned a little soccer clinic for the kids of the village and in the evening we presented the Jesus film to all the people that wanted to come.

Because of intense rain, we spent our first morning at the local elementary school teaching the kids stories from the bible and interacting with some of the adults that were gathered there for the national holiday. That went well, I really don't know what type of impact we made in the lives of those kids there, but I'm sure that they won't forget those times that we spent there with them. In the afternoon, we did a soccer clinic for the kids there. Only three showed up that day, but I could really tell that those kids were having just an awesome time learning from some of our really talented soccer playing university students. In the evening, we showed the Jesus film. Only one family came to the showing because of the intense rain and cold we were experiencing that night. It was a little discouraging to not see very many people show up to these events that we had, but we knew that despite our own plans not working out very well that day, God was working his own plans out, we just didn't know what they were exactly.
The second morning of our trip was not rainy! We actually set out that morning to work with different families around the area. Let me tell you, the people of Los Machos know how to work! The team I led set out to dig dirt out of a little hill and then carry buckets to another hill and we filled that hill with dirt. Pastor Todd Tillinghast and Pastor Correa, the pastors overseeing this project, strategically placed us with some recently converted families to encourage them in their faith. I really encouraged my team members to take the initiative to talk with the family members about the Lord and how good it was to be in his paths. One of the students on my team shared his own testimony with the parents of the house. Later that afternoon, we had the soccer clinic again, but this time, a lot more kids came because it wasn't raining so much. Our two student leaders shared the gospel with the kids in a way that was a little more understandable for them, and they all made decisions to follow Christ. Those kids won't ever be the same again. That night, God really cleared the skies so that people could come to watch the Jesus Film. Many more families came that night to watch the film and many of them made decisions to follow Christ too. It was an amazing night, the sky was beautiful and many of us were praying during the film that God would touch the hearts and lives of these people. At the end, I got to talk to a couple of guys who made a decision to follow Christ. I honestly couldn't get a very deep conversation going with these guys though, but they said that they really liked the message of the gospel and thought that it was good. What amazed me as I talked with some of the other villagers was the fact that some of them had never seen a movie before. It was really cool to know that the first film they had ever watched was about Jesus. Really cool, I'm sure they will never forget the message of the movie and the love of Christ for their lives.
The next morning, we set our for home. It was pouring rain like no other day. This did present us with a little bit of a problem. We had to carry all of our cargo down a long long hill, because the truck couldn't get very far up the hill. We had a lot of slips and falls walking down this hill because it was so slippery. We also got completely soaked! This was super fun for me though, I was having a blast, but the ride down the mountain was a little scary. We had to go down very steep and muddy hills with all of us in the back of a pickup truck on the face of some really high cliffs. The whole time in the back of the truck, I was praying that God would protect us from natural dangers, like mudslides and raging rivers. There was actually a river we had to cross with our truck, but the rain made the river too intense to cross. So we had to cross a small little bridge by foot which was actually another really scary part of the trip. The bridge was so narrow that it scared many of the Panamanian students to actually make it across. We prayed as we crossed the bridge two by two. Below the bridge was a raging river that would have definitely taken our lives had it the chance. But we made it through without problems and the Lord definitely kept us safe the whole way.

Los Machos was an amazing missions trip. It definitely was one of the hardest physically for me, but we also experienced a lot of changes in Plans. Despite our plans changing and things not going the way we wanted them to, we knew that God had his own plans and we learned that we had to trust completely in His will. When our plans would change, we learned not to ask God "why", but to ask Him how we should respond to His changes. I want to thank a lot of you that were praying for our team safety. Those prayers were definitely answered!