Some more on my Life here.

Well, today marks day 24 of us being in this country. I can barely believe we have really been here this long. In some instances, I feel that we have been here for years since things are just coming so naturally (like sweating every moment of the day,  being surprised when hearing English and seeing four people cram on to the back of a moto). I now come to the point in my letters where I tell you all the lovely things we’ve done in the past week and take you on some journeys that I found to be extra special. 
        Well, last Thursday night, another teammate actually went to the hospital. Come to find out, she had parasites from either the water or something that she ate. We are all being extra careful now. She is up and back to her old self now, but it sure was a scare then. Friday night, we put on a two hour children’s program with English and Spanish songs, games and three skits. We’ve gotten pretty good at dishing out programs left and right (in English AND Spanish!). Saturday morning we went to the 7 child orphanage that I talked about a few weeks ago, and then we had all day to prepare for prostitute ministry. I spent the day in prayer and worship with God, and totally wrote 8 pages in my journal. (Most of my email will be about the prostitute ministry that we’ve done this week-go figure..) 
        We were scheduled to leave at 8 so we could get to the bars before the girls were “working” and before the men became too drunk and violent. This was the night that my teammate, Katie, had to be rushed to the hospital because the medicine that was given to her for the parasites was causing her liver to fail. Because of this, we didn’t know if we would even be able to go out because we have to have at least three guys with us, and we were down two at that point (he was at the hospital with Katie). He ended up coming back in time for us to go out into the bars. We get to the first bar (which just so happened to be the night club I told you about last week), but the owner wasn’t there, so we weren’t allowed access. Moving on to the bar next door, about half of us went inside while the other half stayed outside. While my teammates were inside, four police trucks drove up and stopped and the neighboring night club. They raided the place for anyone under 18, since it’s illegal for minors to be in bars here. It was then that we realized that none of us had ID on us to prove we were over 18. 
        We were actually only let into two places that night since we came later and most of the girls had already began “working”. We did meet one man, Julio, who works outside one of the bars as a security officer. Julio is a Christian, and could find no other job in Puerto Barrios. (Jobs are SO hard to find here, which is why so many people resort to prostitution or like Julio, being involved in some way with the bars. We prayed for him and went across the street to a drug house where we met Oscar. Oscar is a man who is drunk 6 out of the 7 days of the week, and on the 7th day, he prays to God and asks Him to be in his life. One of my teammates, Tabitha, ended up talking to him and sharing part of her testimony with him so he could understand God in a different way. While we were at that bar, the place where Julio works (another place we were not allowed in because the owner wasn’t there), got raided. Again, God protected us and allowed us to go freely from the big-mean-policemen. 
        Yesterday, we actually did prostitution ministry in the morning. We were warned that the place we were at actually is more dangerous and the men are more aggressive and it was very possible we could get groped (none of us were though). The first bar we went into there was a woman there named Beatrice. She, along with Julio, said that this was the only place she could find work. She had been working there a year, and actually had been a regular church attendee up until a year ago, when she began working at that bar. We prayed for her, and she broke down in tears. It totally broke my heart thinking that we were very possibly the only people that were going to have a real conversation with her that day. At the next place we went to, I met a girl, “Carla”, that told us how she and her sister had been there for a month, and neither of them liked it. Myself and another teammate chatted with her for a long time, and at the very end, she confessed that she tells people her name is Carla, but her real name is Sonya. At the same bar, I met another girl who was from Nicuragua and had been there four months. She is also there with her sister. After speaking to my leader about conditions I could see outside in the back, I realized that it was a brothel, and a hub for human trafficking. This is the second location we have been to where this has been true. 
        I could literally go on for pages and pages about my experiences and my feelings, but I shall spare you the long read. I ask that you pray for Nicole and Catalina (women at the Night Club from last week), Sonya and Beatrice, and for my teammates. We are bonding as a team now, but we have been getting sick and increasingly are becoming more weary. I ask that you join me in praying for strength for us all.  


Dios le Bendiga! (God bless you!)
-Emma.