Caracas Outreach

Well folks I apologize for the neglect of this blog as of late...I attribute it to 2 things: 1). As usual, life is busy and 2). I believe I'm beginning to lose my use of the English language, and therefore writing has become more difficult than I remember it......The latter, while sounding laughable, is unfortunately truer by the day...I realized the other day that writing here more frequently would counteract these symptoms, so I am returning to the land of blogdom. Unfortunately, since it has been a while I can't remember much to report except for the rather scattered and busy events of the last two weeks.....The most exciting of which was our trip to, and time spent in Caracas.

Caracas is the capital, and largest, city in Venezuela. It is also one of the most dangerous cities in the world....But don't mind that, we all returned safe and sound, and I truly enjoyed my time in Caracas. We, (all of the CCC staff in VZ) came together for a few days to so a "blitz" of the city of Caracas. The ministry of Vida Estudiantil has just this year been "started" in Caracas. Unfortunately due to the
small number of staff, already been spread thin through the country, there is only one couple and their 2 year old daughter serving the ministry and trying to get it off the ground in Caracas. Try as they might, 2 people against a city of 5 million...is a big challenge for anyone. So, in an effort to give the movement a little push in the right direction, we all came together for a time of concentrated work in Caracas on the campuses there. We visited UCV (Universidad Central de Venezuela) the largest university in Venezuela at roughly 70,000 students as well as Simon Bolivar University, a private university with around 30,000 students. We all split into pairs and went sharing the gospel (through the use of the 4 Spiritual Laws), as well as asking students to fill out surveys, and sharing with them what Vida Estudiantil is and what they stand for. We invited each student we talked to, to a large outreach at the end of our time called "Why do we need God?"

Sharing in Caracas was a different experience than sharing in Merida. Caracas being a huuuuuge city (in fact, at times it even reminded me of Seattle) students are much more liberal (as is typical with large cities) and less willing to take time out of their busy schedules to chat with foreigners (who are also more common in the big city). I noticed that I was stared at significantly less most of the time....Almost every Venezuelan was amused at my antics when trying to board the Metro (subway system) however. I wasn't aware that PUSHING and shoving and tripping are pretty much required to earn yourself a spot aboard the train...but I found out quickly! Everything in Caracas was fast-moving and hurried, similar to the US actually. This made sharing with students more difficult as most were in a hurry to get somewhere and didn't have time to stop and chat. However, the Lord still blessed us with many many good conversations and we saw quite a few students accept Christ. I just wrote about the whole event in my prayer letter so I'm going to let you read that for the rest of the info...look forward to the April newsletter headed your way in a matter of days!