Day 31: Love and Spiritual Warfare

We survived! 

Naw, today was a good day. We were a little scared without Lagos and Ana Raquel at the CDI, but Georgen y Doña Maria know what they're doing. Oh...and so does our team. We did really well today, in my opinion. 

I decided to sleep in and run tonight, because I ran late last night and felt pretty sore still.

We started today with a team worship and prayer time, because we've felt some intense spiritual warfare going on. I am not what you would call a spiritually sensitive person. Like, I don't feel like I have the gift of Discernment (in a biblical sense), even if I feel like I have discernment and God leads me by his Spirit. But, some of our team does. The prayer time was really powerful and unifying, methinks. I'm unsure what impact it has had spiritually, but we'll keep praying, and I'd ask you to pray for us, too. 

We loaded everything up and walked to the CDI early, because we wanted to get some things squared away for our Father's Day project, and the new things we're doing with our devotional/discipleship time. It was really productive, and really nice to get to the CDI before the kids were there. Historically, we've gotten there around the same time they do. 

Our time with the kids went well. We shifted the schedule around a little to make space for the painting project. The kids' projects were awesome; some were really poorly done, but super cute. I meant to take a picture, but forgot. If I get there in time tomorrow morning, I'll get y'all a picture. 

The new devotional/discipleship thing went really well! We started by asking the kids what Love meant. They said things like, "giving someone a hug," or "falling in love," or "being friends." When pressed, I think they started to realize they didn't really have a working definition for the word Love. 

(do you? what would you say is a one-sentence definition of love? maybe try to think of one before you read on.)

We read from 1 John 4, talked about the Greatest Commandment, and then read from 1 Corinthians 13. I shared that God is love, and our love and ability to love comes from him loving us first. We're called to Love God and Love Others as the most important things we can do in life. And then we talked about the attributes of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. We are going to memorize that verse a little at a time over the next 3 weeks. We started with paciente y bondadoso. We talked about what those words meant and why it's important to be like that. We wrote them on our chalkboard, and did a mini-craft that will grow over time as we learn more. 

Tomorrow, we'll repeat this lesson with our 2 other sessions, then go on to the next part on Thursday. I am super excited by our plan for Thursday for these kids. It feels like something we'd do with a homegroup, and I really hope they take it seriously and lean into it. Pray for us!

Mateo rocked a pretty complex English lesson while Izzy and I went to buy hooks at the hardware store, then the kids played for the last few minutes. 

After they headed home, we closed it down and headed to El Rey, which is a big store of useful stuff. We bought some art supplies and things we needed for the CDI, then headed home. 

We had some dinner as a team, then watched The Lego Batman Movie. I got to listen to some voice messages from Alexis! Now, I'm here, listening to the rain falling and trying to figure out what I want to do about the run I skipped this morning. Red box? Swap with tomorrow? Run in the rain? Wait it out? Decisions, decisions. 

Also, here's my best stab at a one-sentence definition for love:
Love is wanting and respectfully working towards God's best for another person, even at the expense of your rights and desires.

I think it's important to say God's best, because lots of harm has been done by "love" that works towards "what I think is best for you." And, I do think Love involves laying down our rights, but it has to be a choice; there's no love without choice. And, we can have the confidence that, if we lay down our rights for what is God's best, it is healthy for us. If we lay down our rights for what we or others perceive as best, it can become very toxic very fast. 

PRAYERS!

-for us to walk in step with the Spirit

-for good team dynamics

-blessing for the church here

-for our discipleship times at the CDI to go well
-for H@ngout Wednesday to go well

-for our team to be protected spiritually

-for deeper understanding of Love for...well, everyone