Andrea and I spent yesterday evening enjoying the company of a sweet couple headed for Columbia as missionaries. They’ll be leaving the US in January, ‘08 with a four year commitment of investing into the Prado Veraniego community.
Jorge is originally from Columbia, and Virginia grew up there as her father planted churches throughout the area. With the constant goal of going back to Columbia, they will finally be back after 3 years of living in the US - they’re on their farewell tour right now.
The church they are going to work with has recently relocated to a lower class area not far from where they were originally meeting. Due to changing regulations, the church building is now on the corner of a main avenue surrounded by 2 and 3 story homes delivering commercial space on the first level. The community is a low income area with lots of needs.
As Jorge serves at the church, their focus will be multi faceted to say the least. They will be filling needs in the church, establishing relationships within the community, working with the local businesses, and ultimately be building bidirectional connection within the community and the church.
We were so encouraged to see their huge hearts for the Lord and desire to serve Him with their lives. Their faith is big even now as they plan to leave in January - fully financially supported or not - trusting the Lord to provide for them as they get established in the Columbian community. Even in the face of a $200,000 community home/future community center, Jorge trusts, “…it is easy to raise the funds for that.”
They will be missed, even though we only spent an evening getting to know them.
To find out more about them, check out their blog.