Summer With Inca Link

As you're reading this, Katie and I will be taking off for South America.  We've talked with many of you about our summer plans, but I don't suppose that we've really posted online widely.  When we got married, we discussed how neither of us felt like the Lord was leading us to live overseas long term.  However, we both felt an interest in what God was doing around the world and how our passions for worship, discipleship, and transformational development could be used by Him.

This past winter, God laid it on both of our hearts separately to pursue a short-term opportunity overseas.  We feel God's calling to be Christians who live and work locally, but think and serve globally.  This has led me to serve three different organizations over the past few years, in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Peru.  This year, however, we looked for a way to serve God together internationally, and God opened a door for us with Inca Link, a Christian ministry working with disadvantaged youth in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.  Inca Link runs a big summer internship program, so we'll be joining by some 30 other young adults from around the country who will be spending all or part of the summer in South America.

We will, after visiting the ministry in Colombia and Ecuador, spend most of the summer living in Trujillo, Peru, a mid-sized coastal city in northern Peru.  We will be working alongside the long-term missionaries there to mentor the summer interns and lead short-term teams that come to serve the youth.  Inca Link operates a youth camp and a children's home there and is trying to end the crisis of youth who live and rummage through the city dump for their daily bread.  Serving with Inca link gives us the opportunity to serve the needs of a community in Peru while simultaneously investing in college students from North America who are figuring out what it looks like to live a life dedicated to God.

Our team training will take up the first two weeks.  We'll be rapidly moving throughout Bogota, several cities in Ecuador, Lima, and Trujillo as we compete Amazing Race-style.  I don't know anything about what this time will look like, but it should be really exciting as we experience new things and try challenges we haven't considered before!  After that, our next 10 weeks will be in Trujillo with half of the interns (the rest go to Ecuador).  We'll host a few short-term teams and spend some time on a self-directed project to help the ministry or the community.  We really don't know much about what that time will look like either, other than that for us, our number one priority is to serve as the long-term missionaries want.  Katie and I feel strongly about not coming in with big plans or expectations, but going humbly to listen, learn, and serve at their request.

Katie and I can't wait to improve our Spanish, learn a bit about the culture, and see God at work.  We expect to learn a lot more about God and understand ourselves better as we minister together and worship together.  I can't tell you a lot more than that, because we have kept ourselves pretty much in the dark about the summer in order to let God work as freely as possible.  I hope we learn more about ministry, and about missions.  I hope we are as blessed as anyone we help minister to.  And I can't wait to see all our friends and family again in mid-August to share stories and encouragement!  Stay tuned to this blog to catch our updates as we post them.