Friday, August 29, 2008

New Season with Amazing Opportunities

"The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity - in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground - in the land He swore to your forefathers to give you. The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands."
-Deuteronomy 28:1 - 12 (NIV)

The time I spent at home waiting on God was amazing. It was a great time of rest, being able to regroup, spend time with everyone back home, and prepare for the new season God wanted to move me into! I was excited to see everything that God was going to do in this next 5 months of life and exactly what doors He was going to open to me! 

While I was at home God started setting everything up for my time in Panama and everything that God wanted our team to focus on in the villages. We really feel God pressing on our hearts to put together a team of people to make a DVD, book publication, and more information about the indigenous people of Panama together. Everything the Base Administer wanted to do was everything that I wanted to do in the future in Africa, so my heart soared to be able to work on a project like this with the passion God put in my heart for this specific base the first time I went to Panama. 

I really didn't know what to expect when I came to Panama the beginning of August but I knew God was calling me to come! The day before I left Colorado the base administer, David, last minute stepped down because God was calling him to do something else, so that left me co-leading this team of staff on the base for this project. It is scary and is a huge challenge but something I believe God wants me to step up to. God has given me all the tools I need to do this and I have to step into the calling He gave me a long time ago! I know its going to be stretching for me and push me like I have never known before, but at the same time really excited and what I want to do!


Our team has been praying a lot and work out exactly what we are doing with this project and this is what God has placed on our hearts for this time...!
Within the heart of Panama there are six major indigenous tribes that live in the jungles! Their culture is rapidly changing as they lose hope for the future as indigenous people and are losing their identities. They are caught between their traditional ways and modern culture, not knowing how to hold onto one while embracing the other. So as a team of seven missionaries all working for Youth With A Mission on the Panama base we are called to help them restore their hope, cultural identity, and future.
We want to create a way for the indigenous people to see the hope again for their culture and be able to embrace it for what it is and who they are. Along with creating a way for the indigenous people to be heard for what they truly are. So we are taking the heart of music, video, photography, and storytelling to give them hope for the next generations, along with showing the world their lives as they really are. 

Message of Hope

We are taking a message of hope into the tribe to inspire the indigenous people to stand up for their rights and cultural identity. In this we will have music worships in the villages to inspire the people to utilize their traditional music and dance to reach the emerging generation. These workshops will result in recording the music in  every tribe and making a CD that can be used both to reach their own people and share with others around the world. 

Documentary

We desire to see the older generation inspiring hope in the younger generation through their words and testimonies, showing them the way of living as indigenous people in a rapidly changing world. That it will not be our words but straight from their own people whom have found a way of living in this generation. Their stories will be filmed in order to produce a DVD available to distribute in the communities where we minister. 

Publication

We are taking in the aspect of photography to capture the culture and lifestyle of the indigenous people in a real way for the outside world to see it. This will be used on our website and to make a book publication combining their photos and their stories from the documentary in order to distribute into other parts of the world. We dream of their voices being heard and understood for who they truly are today throughout the world! 

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