Brooklynn’s race February 2014 | Monthly Newsletter of The World Race

Hanging with the Boys

Upcoming Dates 2.1 Leave Puerto Rico (Spending the night in the airport) 2.2 All squad Debrief in the Dominican Republic 2.8 Ministry Starts in the DR 2.28 Leave for Bolivia

This month in Ponce, Puerto Rico has been much more than I could have ever imagined. I was a little nervous when they told us we would be working in a drug rehabilitation facility for men all month long. I wasn’t sure how I would be useful in ministry. Could I relate to these men? What should I say? Would they even want to talk to me? These doubts and fears were quickly put to rest after one day at Hogar Crea. We spent the first 2 ½ weeks at the facility with the men. We did some Bible studies, worshiped, had group discussions, shared our testimonies, and played games. However, majority of the day was spent just hanging out. We sat around for hours, talking and watching the manatees swimming in the bay behind the facility. It was wonderful. Most of the men are there under a court order, but some are voluntarily seeking treatment. At first, they were distant and only the older men would come and talk to us. But after the first day, and a couple rounds of Uno I always had a crew to talk with. They were so open to share their stores and thankfully quite a few spoke English. One of the men that the Lord pushed me to Continued on page 2...

Continued … invest in was Carlos. He’s a 26 year old guy who is serving a 6 month sentence at Crea. He has such a joy about him. He is always smiling and laughing and telling jokes. I spent a lot of time with Carlos during the first week talking about similar interests, our families, and whatever other topics we could muster with my limited Spanish and his limited English. There was a lot of Spanglish happening. We had the guys over to our camp two Monday’s ago for MLK day and in the midst of the water balloon fights, the s’mores, and the games, the Lord told me to dig deeper with Carlos. So that next day while we were talking I asked him about why he was at Crea. Then there was a Jesus moment. Carlos got really serious (which was unusual) and began telling me his story. He started off with our typical Spanglish and then switched to only Spanish. He began pouring his soul out, tears running down his face, talking about his most intimate points in his life and I couldn’t understand. I recognized words here and there but I didn’t want to stop him to ask for the others. I quickly said a silent prayer, “God help me understand him.” And I did. It was the weirdest thing, I couldn’t repeat any of the words he said, but my spirit knew exactly what he was saying. This continued for about 45 minutes and then again the next day. I couldn’t respond, so I did a lot of heading nodding and listening, but he didn’t care. He needed to talk, and God let me be the one to listen. After he was done I was able to tell him a little about my story and how important Christ is to me. Later that day we did a small Bible study and someone asked if any of the guys wanted to end in prayer. Carlos was the first to raise his hand and he said one of the most honest and heartfelt prayers I’ve ever heard. God is pretty cool!

There was a lot of other great things that happened at Crea. There was another young guy named Roberto that was everyone’s favorite. He was always one of the first to greet us and was so full of life. One day while talking, he said something to some of my teammates and me that every Christian wants to hear. He said, “You guys are so different, I want to be like you.” I said, “The only thing that is different about us is that we have Jesus is our hearts.” He asked what that meant and another girl on my team explained. He then said, “I think I’ll ask Jesus tonight.” WHOO HOOO! That’s what it’s all about!

Camp Caribe The rest of the month was spent working at the camp where we’ve been living. It’s a beautiful camp, right on the beach, for kids and youth from the community that runs during the summer. During the off months they host missions teams, corporate team building activities, church retreats, and a bunch of other stuff. We helped with a range of things from cleaning, trying rebar, cleaning an attic, to wiring a storage closet for electricity. It was a great time to get our hands dirty as a team and bless the camp for allowing us to stay here. Here is their website. http://www.campcaribe.com/en/about.html

Next Month Tonight my squad will be reunited in the airport, where we will spend the night for our 6am flight tomorrow morning. We will have a few days of debrief together, where our coaches from headquarters fly in to check on us and have a time of rest and worship together. After that we are headed to La Paz, Dominican Republic to serve at H.O.P.E, a church plant ministry and children’s education facility. Here is their website. http://www.hope4drnow.org/

Prayer Needs Please pray for my squad this month. We will be all together (45people) sleeping in tents in the mountains! Pray for strength and unity!

Dios te bendiga, Brooklynn

Romans 5:8 “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”