This isn’t an easy trip, by any means. Brittany left us in Costa Rica to produce a film of larger scale in Michigan because we need the money, and another film for us younguns is always beneficial to our worldly credentials and production knowledge. But the rest of us are green with envy for the 5 day work weeks she’ll have and the three-course meals of food she’ll be having. In serousness, we miss her dearly already, and pray for her presence to remain with us while she is in Michigan.
Meanwhile, Cartagena is a city of Colombia’s best shopping, oldest architecture, and rampant prostitution. We visited the “old city” today, wandering from street show to street show, dancing to live jazz music and dodging horse carriages on the cobblestone streets. Near the end of the night, Rob and Phil ran into a man who wanted to speak to us gringos. Phil said they were looking for prostitutes and the man quickly ran through his list of source cities, and ethnicities of women. He offered to send them to our hotels, but we said we’d just come back tomorrow and go to his club. Hopefully we can get some really great footage tomorrow and start to crack down on the core of this issue from the inside out.
The team has been attacked with sickness, as Diego was bed-ridden instead of a trip over to Venezuela to find another vehicle (since our RV finally died on the side of the road.) He’s still recovering. Phil is nearing the end of a 3-week long sickness, after losing about 10 pounds. We believe that this is an attack intended to alter our judgment and narrow our focus on the wrong things. But by the Lord’s strength, we will not falter.
Diego received a word in Panama as we prayed – the beginning of Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the sower. “The seed is the Word of God”. We prayed into that, concluding that we must spend more time in the Word and in prayer so that we can accurately spread the Word whenever the Spirit provokes us.
Pray that we will follow through with that. Pray to the Lord that we will persist in this journey by the leadership of the Lord, and not on our own strength, for sickness and confusion that we have experienced makes our flesh even weaker. It’s clear that only the Spirit can bring success to this documentary, since we know not what success will even look like.
We covet your prayers, and ask that you pray for us continually. Read the Word on our behalf, and spend time fasting for our health. Please recognize the power of the Spirit, and that the strength of the Body of Christ transcends geography, time, health, and language. We are out to bring the powerful healing of Christ’s gospel to the abused and abusive masses, and this can only happen by our mutual love for these people, for each other, and for Christ, who saved us.
