Living la Vida Tica in the South : Build Your Kingdom Here...

“Build your Kingdom here let the darkness fear, show your mighty hand, heal our streets and land, set your world on fire, win this nation back, change the atmosphere, build your Kingdom here we pray”

This song has played over and over again in my heart and mind the past month with seeing and being part of many different areas of ministry. This month has been a whirlwind month being in and out of normal life starting with my visit to Bluffton, SC at the being of the month to our annual fundraiser, Women’s Tea, to hosting a work team last week from Blount Co. Young Life.

YL team and high schoolers who helped with the Women's Tea!

I was very blessed to work alongside a wonderful group of 16 seniors from Maryville High School and their 3 leaders. All week we worked in a very impoverished community called Tirrases. The community has a very interesting history, starting as a family’s large plantation like farm, and then it being taken over by impoverished families coming and settling on their land. Then it was later turned into a local garage dump where the people continued to reside. And in more recent years, the government closed the garage dump kicking many families out of their “home.” So now the majority of the families of this community live in shacks pieced together by aluminum scraps from the dump. And as you can imagine, the neighborhood suffers from a great deal of drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution, and violence leaving many kids in dangerous home situations.

They made it!

Tirrases- where we worked all week!

So the government and the Catholic University have built a community center in between the lower level school and high school, where kids are offered a place to study, rest, use the computer, and mainly be loved. This center is called La Cometa, the kite in Spanish, and it was named this with the vision that a kite needs someone to lift it up off the ground to allow it to fly. And that’s just what this center is doing. They are pouring into as many kids as they can with very few staff and volunteers.

La Cometa!

So our part of this center was painting it and cleaning up the place to make it more of a safe refuge for the kids. But the more important part of this work team’s presence was opening up doors for Isa, one of our Vida Joven (Young Life) staff, to begin making relationships and getting into this community. Isa has dreamed of starting a YL club in this very tough dangerous neighborhood for a while now and she told us last week that by us being there it’s opened up that door for her dream to come true. Although, we enjoyed painting it was incredible to see Isa and Jose Pablo begin to share the love of Jesus with local kids in the neighborhood.

Our last day of work I started the team off by reading Colossians 1:27, "To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory," stating that they have God’s hope and glory in them and that’s what this community needs. We prayed over the community looking out to the hillside covered in shantytowns singing, “Build your Kingdom here let the darkness fear, show your mighty hand, heal our streets and land, set your world on fire, win this nation back, change the atmosphere, build your Kingdom here we pray.” It was heart breaking to see the brokenness and death that stains this community, but we all knew Christ was there and loved this community more than we ever could and that He has a big plan for Tirrases. Later in the day we were picking up trash all over the property and I just ached for these people to know that there is hope and love to be found in this life. We finished paintingand left with tears in our eyes and Michele chasing us waving goodbye, but left knowing and hoping for God’s glory to shine in this place and his Kingdom to come one day.

Final day at La Cometa!

I loved spending the week with these girls and seeing them process Latin America and extreme poverty for the first time. It took me back to my first time to Nicaragua when my world was turned upside down. I encourage them as we parted to never forget their experiences, to not feel guilty for the blessings they have, but to use them to bless others and spread awareness by sharing their experiences with others. I will never forget last week and what the Lord showed me about His presence and hope in the midst of such darkness and despair. As my Lenten devotional said today, “At your fingertips, places of death are made into places of life…Today, have faith that places that seem to be dying places…God means to bring forth life.” I truly believe this. God wants to bring hope and His glory to this earth and His Kingdom to be restored. He will succeed. He also can bring life to dead places within your heart and life as well. I hope that this encourages and motivates you to share your dark places with Him and to seek justice to the needy in whatever way He’s calling you.

Just a fun little snapshot of my day at Country Day School's Fun Run!

A wonderful day with kids, my cross country team, families, and CDS staff!