field trip?!

In a classic case of Panamanian action, protests shut down the national university for three days last week. Normally we would take a "riot day" and catch up on administration or whatever loose ends needed to be taken care of but for three day and with a team of 5 Canadian students working hand-in-hand with Jon and I this wasn't an option last week and so.... we headed on what originally thought would be a one or two day field trip to the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, UTP. We headed to the private campus to do some evangelism and weren't really sure what was in store for the team there or at the national campus. As the days passed and the national campus didn't open I think that as a team we fell more and more in love with the UTP campus and more importantly the students there. I walked onto campus there for the first time and was surrounded by trees and I could hear the birds instead of the normal drone of Panamanian traffic. Both the students and the staff there were awesome and as we pulled students from the national campus onto UTP to come help us go sharing I was simply excited to be there.

UTP has no campus for Christ staff working permanently at it but it does have part time staff and a small but dedicated group of volunteers with a heart for that campus. And so, the decision was made that even though national campus had opened up, our team would be staying at UTP for the remainder of May. When I told Johnny, one of the key volunteer leaders at UTP, that my team would be staying at UTP you could see the shock all over his face. "Really???" he said. His face of appreciation and gratitude made any qualms I would have had about a campus change completely disappear. We're excited to be on a new campus and see something new happen from the ground up, that way we'll know like always it was God, and not us, that was really at work!