After journeying almost 2500 miles south from Nashville, this year’s Students Living a Mission interns from G.O.D. Int’l didn’t miss a beat in jumping in to embrace the people in communities surrounding San Salvador, El Salvador.
Having developed a children’s educational camp called Camp Skillz that they facilitated in Nashville for marginalized children, the interns translated this into Spanish and provided a dynamic week of educational activities for the children in a community called Sitio Nuevo.
Outside of Camp Skillz, the interns assisted in building projects on the property of G.O.D. Int’l is in the community of Sitio Nuevo, where homes are being built to house our development workers.
The interns stayed in host homes in the local community, where they became more acquainted with families and home life in Salvadoran culture and even had the opportunity to work alongside locals in their daily responsibilities, like cooking, carrying wood, and landscaping their properties. This has assisted greatly in helping our organization at large to develop a rapport with the people in Sitio Nuevo.
Interns were also given the opportunity to visit a local orphanage, where they spent time interacting with the 50 boys and girls who call it home. The interns had the opportunity to sit and learn their stories as well as encourage them with a production of skits and songs.
Due to a variety of circumstances, schools in El Salvador are often without enough teachers. Due to this reality, the interns were able to spend a day assisting in a local school, teaching English classes, and interacting with students.
On top of assisting with the school system, the team learned how to identify public issues in various small communities and what the causes were for these issues. Interns were introduced to what it really looks like to come alongside the poor and marginalized and empower them to transform the environment in which they live.
Over the course of their time in El Salvador, the interns also accompanied the band UnNamed Servant as they played different venues in El Salvador on their summer tour. They assisted the band in setting up and tearing down equipment before and after the shows. As the band ministered to the people through song, the interns had the privilege of engaging those who listened and were eager to learn and see justice done in the world around them.
Continue to pray for this summer’s interns as they have debriefed from their time in El Salvador by facilitating a week of service projects in North Carolina for those in need in the city of Raleigh and have now made it back to Nashville.
Written by: Brett Madron
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