El Salvador Trip Notes

 

 
 
 



Thank you to everyone who prayed for our team while we were in El Salvador last week.  It was an amazing week of ministry.  There are so many who have gone before us that set such a great foundation.  Through their efforts the Lord blessed our trip and we are eternally grateful for their work.  Here are some thoughts and recap from our trip.

The Team
I went with a team of 15 members from 3 churches in South East Missouri with ages ranging from 13-68.  By God's grace our team had amazing chemistry even though we did not know each other very well before the trip.  I have been on a lot of teams and trips overseas but this by far was one of the best "team" experiences I have ever had.  There was no complaining or whining (even when we lost power at our hotel and when our schedule kept changing).  There was flexibility and humility.  Most of all there was joy and excitement to be able to serve the Lord.

The Training
It was difficult for me to break away from the group each day but the main reason I went on this trip was to train El Salvadorian Pastors in the Old Testament.  We met Monday-Wednesday from 8AM-4PM and Thursday from 8AM-12PM and worked through the Pentateuch.  We spent time during the introduction to the Old Testament to talk about the structure and order and how Luke 24 shows us how Jesus read the Old Testament.  Then we spent a lot of time in Genesis.  Genesis is so crucial because of the foundation it provides the rest of the Bible and typically we read through it quickly or assume we "know" it and we miss the structure and patterns that then keep reappearing throughout the Bible.

It was a challenging task teaching all day and using an interpreter but it was so worth it.  The pastors were hungry to learn and showed great signs of taking in and being able to process and apply what we discussed.  The pastors also had great questions and reflections and we had to park on several texts and theological issues.  It was a blessing to be able to show them how true 2 Timothy 3:16 is and to wrestle with the difficult texts found in the Pentateuch.

The Church Plants
Churches in our association here in Missouri have begun partnering with church plants going on in El Salvador.  This trip our teams were able to visit these locations and talk with the pastors about how we can help them going forward and in some areas they were able to evangelize and minister to the surrounding villages.  We got great feedback and ideas going forward to help plan for future trips with specific needs that those teams can meet.  This is huge as the nature of trips will be transitioning from how they have gone in the past to how we can help in the future.  We were able to worship at the church plant in Apaneca one night and spend the day evangelizing in some surrounding villages and saw a great need for a VBS team to come back and not only run a VBS but also train the members in Apaneca how to have a successful  children's outreach ministry.

Church Services
Apart from one night at Apaneca, we spent each night at Santa Catarina for church services.  We had a team that ministered to the children doing various teachings, puppets, crafts, and singing.  We also had a group lead the youth a couple of times (even though they were only given a few moments notice that they were going to minister to the youth) and the rest of us did panel discussions with the adults.  The panel discussions led to incredible discussions and questions.  Issues such as identity, spiritual gifts, marriage, idolatry and etc were brought up in our discussions.  You could tell that great strides were being made each night we had these discussions.  They normally went very long and we would have to end the discussions, even though they could have kept going.

The People
Again our team was amazing but it was also so encouraging to see brothers and sisters in El Salvador.  I remembered many who I had met in November and we were able to work with amazing translators and pastors while there.  Roberto (the main translator) quickly took our team under his wing and was a great source of information, entertainment, and was the glue that kept us all together.  It was a privilege to get to know the pastors while in training and the pastors of each church we worked with.

Fun Day
On Friday our team broke up and some went shopping in A Taco and the rest of us went Zip Lining in Apaneca.  The Zip Line was an awesome experience and there were some amazing views of the mountains, coffee plantations, and the city of Apaneca.  After meeting the rest of the team for lunch in A Taco we went to a Mayan ruin for the afternoon.  It rained...no it poured on our way to the ruin and several us in the back of the pick-up truck we were in got soaked.  It was still raining when we got to the ruin so we did not stay long but it was very interesting looking into the history and technology of the Mayans.