MINISTRY BEGINS

Wednesday begins our first day of actually going out to do some ministry. The first thing we did is the kind of thing I really like because it is such an unlikely and unusual thing. We went to a private Christian Chinese School in Panama City to share, sing, and perform drama for.  Now how many people do you know who have ever done that?  It was fun and the staff was really happy to have us be there. I sure didn't know this before coming here but there is a really large Chinese population in Panama, about 5-10 percent of the population is Chinese.  They run all the small stores around. Whether I went to the laundry, the Internet cafe, of the grocery store they were all run by Chinese, now I thought that was odd.
So anyway they are not very friendly and they don't want to be bothered with talking to people so these Chinese Chriatians decided to start this school in the hopes of opening the door for the gospel to them. Seventy percent of the kids that attend the school are Chinese. The school teaches English, Spanish, and Chinese so the kids learn all 3 languages and when they graduate they will be able to communicate with 90% of the worlds population. Chinese parents are attracted to sending their kids to this school where they get a better education. It really was a cool school.
In the afternoon we went and shared at another smaller private school that is affiliated with YWAM and the kids that go there come from not such good homes so they were fun too.
The next day we actually went to men's prison and did our dramas, sang and gave testimonies. Now that was pretty wild going to a prison. We had to have papers from a pastor that goes there and works with them and then going through all the security checks was interesting. The kids from the Panama team are quite musical, they play instruments and a couple are quite good singers so they really do a great job. All of together really do a pretty good job of ministering in all these different situations.
In the afternoon we went to a girls orphanage. It was sad to think of those girls having no family but it was good to be able to go there.
Finally on Friday we went to the worst most dangerous neighborhood in Panama City. There are 18 gangs in the area, it's full of crime, drugs, and prostitution. Recently the police have started having a real strong presence in the area and things a improved a little. A Christian group has come in and started a school there and one of the guys who has been there for a couple of years says that he has seen some positive changes since he has been there. We did our program at the school, the kids were really cute. A little lady from YWAM has been working with the kids and some of the moms who are prostitutes trying to show them the love of God and help in raising their kids so she made arrangements for us to also do a prayer walk while we were there so one guy from the school walked with us to the police station around the corner and a policeman went with us on our prayer walk to help keep us safe. It was pretty powerful and quite interesting.