Outreach in Albuquerque, New Mexico

So this past week was a crazy week. We left sunday morning for Albuquerque, NM and came back this past thursday night. It was an awesome time and God definitely did some awesome stuff while we were there. We split the whole dts into 3 groups and every evening we would either go to the local jail or the homeless shelter. Heres the day by day breakdown:


Sunday: a pretty uneventful day due to the fact that we were traveling for 9 hours in vans. It was  a pretty scenic drive though thanks to the mountains and the occasional antelope that i would spot. But we got there safe and sound without any mechanical breakdowns and such. We didn't really have any idea what kind of place we would be staying at for the next 4 nights but all we knew is we would be sleeping on the ground. However we were pleasantly surprised when we got to the church. We stayed at a huge church in the childrens area, and in this childrens area was a full blown play area thing like u find in mcdonalds but better. So as soon as we settled in of course we had our fun but sadly that was the last night we could play on it. Apparently it wasn't quite built for kids our age. Weird. But anyway the church had a very building and we were definitely fortunate enough to stay in such a nice building.


Monday: In the morning we had class and some skit practices before we went out in the afternoon. That day i was in the jail and some other people went to a halfway house for women just coming out of jail. Both ministry times were very powerful. We went to three different pods that day and ended up meeting up with the other group in a pod called God's pod. Apparently this was a pod that had a strong group of christians in it. They even played a few songs for us. It was  such an awesome experience to see these guys even though they were in some pretty hard situations, still worship God. At first when we started our little program in our first pod it was pretty unnerving. I had never done skits before not to mention in front of people. But as we got going i could see that these guys were interested in what we were doing and God opened my eyes to the need in there lives for God. So once we had finished putting on our skits and dramas we had time to talk and pray with the inmates. They were very open and honest with us which made things easy.


Tuesday: We started off the day with class time again. The topic of this week was fear of God and Donna (our dts leader's wife) was the speaker. Again it was some great teaching. After that i left with my group to go to the jail again. This was probably my favorite day in the jail. In the first pod we went to me and another girl from my dts talked to this one guy. He ended up telling us that he was in jail because he had killed a man but was hopefully going to get out soon because it was out of self defense. This man during our whole drama presentation thing was watching very intently. So when we went to talk to him he told us how we were such a blessing. We were able to pray for him and he started crying and he ended up praying to rededicate his life to Christ. It was so awesome to see God get a hold of his heart and really just touch his life. I was also able to pray with a lot of people in different pods. God gave me lots of confidence to really reach out to people.


Wednesday: This was our last day of doing our outreaches there. This day i went to a place called joy junction, this was a homeless shelter that took in families. Its a pretty awesome ministry they had set up. So when we got there we served lunch to the people there. After that we did some odd jobs. Then we did our skits and dramas for the people there and had some ministry time afterwards. Me and another girl prayed for this one mom. She told us that she hadn't felt God like this in a long time and its just what she needed. Her daughter was going through some hard stuff and so we were able to pray for her for that. It was again awesome to see God touch her situation and give her the boost she so desperately needed.

Thursday: Another travel day. Not too much happened.

So then we got back and had class friday as usual. And that brings us to today. A few of us went to a state park about a half hour from eagle rock. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the park was amazing. Its a popular spot for rock climbing. I took a few pics but they just don't do it justice.

Here are some pics of the park and of outreach--

Enjoying the slide :)

It was pretty awesome

A little vista we passed on our way to the park on Saturday

This is why rock climbers like this park. If you look close you can see them climbing

theres a climber on the far right side.

pretty mountain stream. 

It was such a beautiful place

Well thats about it now. Another week down and i've been here over a month now. Time is really flying! Hope you all have an awesome week!