May Short Term Team

You know how the first pancake never turns out right? The pan’s not hot enough, or you didn’t use enough water or non-stick spray or whatever. Sometimes you have to do something before you learn how to do it well. That’s how this short term team was, except we had three big, new things all planned for the same week. We learned a lot.

In the planning for this short term team from Olivet, we decided to plan a “big event” for the end of their time and use the week leading up to publicize through the city. We didn’t have the means to fly in a famous speaker, so we made a crazy plan. Extreme pays to send a pastor from the church in Cali, Colombia where we trained to each church plant to lead an Encounter retreat. We strategically planned an Encounter for the first weekend of the short term trip and kept the pastor (Ferney Oliveros) for the whole week to preach in the big event (not like against his will or anything). So that was it: lead an Encounter retreat, do five days of evangelism events with fourteen college students all over the city, and have our first big event downtown all in a span of eight days.

Missions In Action 2016 group from Olivet Nazarene University

The short term team arrived Thursday. On Friday, we walked all over Cordoba with them to give them a feel for the city and pray for the people, government, universities, healthy churches, etc. Saturday began the chaos with the Encounter and our first event with the short termers. We wanted all our church members, new and experienced, to have the opportunity to hear Pastor Ferney, so we opted to hold the Encounter in the church instead of a hotel. This made the retreat cheaper and more accessible for everyone. It also allowed all our church leaders to attend and help while half of our missionary team was out with the short termers. One of the Encounter participants was Sofia. If you haven’t read her story already, you can find it here.

Welcoming Encounter participants

Monday was a “day off” in that we only worked eight hours instead of fifteen. We had another worship team practice for the big event, a leadership meeting to train our local church leaders in intercession and consolidation for the big event, and Laura’s 30^th birthday party. Pretty sweet as far as days off go.

This probably the closest I'll ever get to being part of the Partridge family, so I'm soaking up
every minute of it.

Laura's birthday dinner

Tuesday through Friday was one big blur of plazas, skits, and flyers. Our general strategy was to do a flash mob dance to draw attention, perform a skit that shared the gospel, Pastor Ferney preached a short message, and we prayed and talked with the people listening. This was met with varying success depending on the plaza, weather, and time of day.

Ashley and Bekah doing consolidation

The big event Saturday was called Hope for Cordoba. This was the first time we involved our church leaders in the processes of intercession and consolidation. They came early to pray with us over the auditorium, worship team, and pastors. After the altar call, they prayed with new people and got their contact information so we could follow up with them. 

LeveLibular Acrobats did a great job. The act was based on trust and
teamwork. From this angle, you can see Pastor Ferney is one of four men
holding the pole in place on stage. 

We look pretty good! We'll be releasing an album next month.

Five people came forward to accept Christ

And many more needed prayer

Our biggest take away was to never again plan a big event during late autumn or winter. Three weeks later, we have five new people faithfully attending Sunday church and houses of prayer. We are still in contact with several more, meeting with them and encouraging them. We treasure each new person who gets involved in the church because we know we have to invest a lot to reach even one person. We treasure each opportunity we have because we know our investment has eternal rewards. We praise the God of miracles who changes hearts despite cultural resistance, weather, and our feeble attempts to evangelize.