Monday brought us a unique opportunity to serve the Lord in Cali. Since it was a national, religious holiday, the schools were closed and our hosts had planned all along for Monday to be a tourism day. However, because we had not had the opportunity to go up to the mountain park on Sunday, we chose to forego a tourism day and go to that same park on Monday. This turned out to be a great idea. This park, Cristo Rey (King Christ), features a statue of Christ very similar to that in Rio De Janeiro (only 4 meters shorter). It is a popular destination on weekends and holidays because of the spectacular view of the city. So after a quick stop for the team to buy souvenirs (see pictures), we headed up to the park. Upon arriving, we found that hundreds of people were there with scores of people coming and going every 10-15 minutes. We found an ideal spot to set up our presentations and the park curator gave us enthusiastic permission to proceed. We began with one group performing “The Clincher” drama. The other group then performed “The Creation” (we performed these at the Missions picnic). We estimate that close to 100 people gathered to watch these performances. And even though the microphone on the sound system malfunctioned, Kevin Maner was able to project his voice sufficiently enough that everyone could hear his commentary on each of the skits.

After the skits, Annie Roache painted the sketchboard story of the Titanic while Haleigh Krauss told the story (with Kevin interpreting). Again we had a large crowd gather for this presentation. We then had the young ladies in our group perform a dramatic interpretation to “I Can Only Imagine” (in Spanish) and then Marty Kronz stood in front of the large gathered crowd and delivered a hard-hitting gospel message. Our weeks of preparation truly paid off. Every performance and every presentation was nearly flawless.

Once we were done with the presentations, etc., we offered free balloon art and face painting. As people gathered for this, we distributed tracts and were successful in engaging in several conversations. Providentially, since this was a tourist destination, there were several english speaking people there and many of the members of our group were able to speak with them without needing an interpreter.

We stayed at the park the entire afternoon. Our hosts, who admitted some minor skepticism, were (in their words) “blown away and speechless” as to how effective a method of presenting the gospel this was. Javier (the pastor of our host church) was so excited about the opportunities for us to take our group around Colombia and even perhaps to Ecuador some day.

That night, at our debrief meeting, we discussed ideas of how we could reproduce this kind of opportunity in our own country and how anxious we were to be able to visit our first school on Tuesday.