T-20 days and the ball is still rolling!

         I am so glad to be writing to you to tell you that I WENT TO THE JAIL YESTERDAY!!!! FINALLY! God opened the door and it was GREAT!!! :) Thank you to the people who have been praying and I ask that you CONTINUE to pray because God is working in the hearts of some of those women there! I am sad because I can only go for one more week because the week after is testing day and the last Wednesday that I will be in Argentina, BUT I am going to use it for God’s glory! So I am going to tell you a little what my experience was like! First: for anyone who does not know, I was given the opportunity to be a part of the Women’s Jail Ministry and is just me and 3 other women from Word of Life.  We go on Wednesday afternoons and have a bible study with one area of a women’s jail, in a different part of the Buenos Aires providence.  When I first heard them talking about it in chapel, I could feel God calling me to ask about the ministry.  A little after that, I got a little bit of training and was told that there is a need of people in women’s jail is because for example with the men, most of the time they have wives, family, kids, etc, that come and see them for visitation.  With the women, if they had a boyfriend or husband, they usually didn’t stick around, family is ashamed to see them, and they themselves are ashamed for their children to see them.  What a heartbreaker, right? A month or so ago was my first chance to go, we drive the almost 2 hour drive there and we weren’t able to get in.  I thought it was God shutting the door, and it was! Little did we know when we pulled up that there was a conflict going on in the inside that became very dangerous because some police were getting there things ready to go in, ambulance was prepared, and it goes on! I didn’t see all of this, and that was God protecting my eyes and heart because He had a plan for me to go back and knew that if I saw those things, I wouldn’t want to! Anyway, God REALLY took care of us! Imagine if that would have started while we were on the inside! Praise God! Then, the week after, we get notice that the station “made up a rule” that we had to have legal credentials to enter.  One of the other girls in the ministry has been doing this for over a year and doesn’t have those credentials and just some odd day they decide! Who knows what happened but we just kept praying for the opportunity while the other two women continued going.  So finally! This week! We were allowed to go! And here is what happened…

            I already knew the route to get there, so once I started to recognize that we were close to arriving, the nerves started kicking in.  I couldn’t think of an exact verse to keep whispering to myself for strength but I remember that a friend reminded me at school of how God protected us last time, what’s stopping Him from doing the same today? So I decided to say “I’m trusting in you Lord! I’m trusting in you Lord! I’m trusting in you Lord!”  The door opened, we were going in, kept saying that to myself.  Each door we had to wait to go through, kept saying that to myself.  We finally reached to the last door before our designated area and I was honestly scared, in my mind that is.  We entered, and it was just like a dorm room type of set up.  There were 24 rooms, 2 levels, and a middle area with tables and an area to talk! I tried to keep in mind all the things I was told to and not to say or do and keep a smile at the same time.  I was known as Margarita, just to make things easier and the women that were there at the moment were very receptive and smiled right back! As the rest that wanted to come to the bible study started to come out, I was just observing the area and trying to talk with some of them.  They were so nice! I was able to sing to start off worship and we brought the lyrics so that they could keep them and read along.  Joy overcame my heart when some started to sing once they started reading the words of the song.  A woman even started to tear up!  What a sight to see! The song spoke of God loving us like a father, like a brother, like a fierce lion, like no other person and how He looks for us with strength to hug us and He wraps us in His love!  How perfect was that for those women! More of an impact than I expected!  After the bible study was over, the women that began to cry started talking with me, and she just kept talking and talking and talking.  And you know what? I was totally okay with that! I realized that they just need someone to talk to! I was asking God in those moments to give me a good ear to understand everything she was saying (because it was in Spanish) and so I can give her encouragement afterwords!  In this moment, I totally forgot that I was even in a jail.  I looked at her while she was talking but looking through the eyes of Christ, I am NO different that she is! I have as much sin as any other person and the blessing of knowing Christ is that when we stand in front of our Heavenly Father one day, is that those “mistakes” are not seen….all that is seen is Christ standing in front of me!  I won’t share everything she said but if you all could be praying for Monica and that God would bring her comfort and joy just by knowing Christ!  I shared with her that parts of the bible were written while the writers were in jail! And that jail now is A LOT nicer than they were then! But also, those writers were probably the closest to God than ever in those moments because all they could do was rely on Him and call out to Him for comfort!  What an encouragement?!  You could see God really start to work in her life and it hit me in the face when I realized what a blessing it is to be in a bible institute where explanations of the word are fed to me and how I can just use a commentary or look something up on the internet when I don’t understand a certain part of the bible!  Monica cherished her bible and I could tell that she didn’t always understand everything and that is why it is OUR responsibility to go reach the people in the jails.  The bible even says that! It is written quite a bit “Remember those in jail!  Don’t forget them!”  They don’t have those luxuries of studying the word, so I need to follow what the bible tells me and go TO them, and explain!

 I could make this blog go on forever of how much God shared with me yesterday, but I wanted to give you guys a little taste of what happened and share that I am so excited for the next week and how I hope to get involved in a jail ministry at home!

PLEASE BE PRAYING! Pray for more students here to have the desire to get involved! Once I leave, they are looking for two more girls to come along! Pray that God can make this a strong team and that He would just make their path wide open to bring His love into this jail!