Colombia: John and Laurie Lopez

If you missed our livestream of John and Laurie Lopez (Colombia) on WorldVenture::In Review, here is the recording. The first five minutes is our pre-stream which includes a video and announcements.

Links Of Interest:

• Learn more about John and Laurie (click here) 
• Learn about the Sheweys (click here)
• Register for an upcoming workshop or see what livestreams are upcoming (click here) 
• Want to talk to someone about going to Colombia? Click here and complete the form. The form is not a commitment to go.

Quotable Quotes:

Some highlighted quotes from this interview. Feel free to share the link to this blog with your quote. 

• Laurie Lopez: “And the choice to be serious about my relationship with the Lord saved me from a ton of stuff.”
• John Lopez: “And they [my parents] were just living a, I don’t know, a life without God. One morning we found our neighbors killed by the guerrilla group. And next week our preacher came, and they [my parents] wanted to hear the gospel and they [my parents] started to listen, and then they start being Christian. And I was interested. I wanted to learn more. But I get baptized when I was like 14, a teenager. And later, when I came to the city by myself, I needed to make my own decision. So, well, I didn’t have more than the Lord with me. My life changed, at that moment, and I understood that my life is service. So, it is like my life story about how I start in this relationship with God, with the Lord, that is amazing and tough.”
• John Lopez: “And I couldn’t answer that question because I just wanted to know more about the Lord. I ask myself, so what is my purpose? And I understand that it is, I just need to be available to serve where the Lord puts you and I was working for a little company here and I felt that I was like wasting, wasting my life like I can do more than I am doing.”
• Laurie Lopez: “I have a mentoring group; we have a reading club. People here don’t like to read. They don’t read. And I love to read. So, I think we need to give them this love for reading. And so, we started a reading group, and my group were reading through the Chronicles of Narnia. And so, it’s been fun to see them getting involved in the in the story and like, yeah, maybe people like to read them.” 
• Laurie Lopez: “So, yeah, and really our heart is to have fewer kids that we work with, and work with them deeply. It’s like a family. We come together, we sit down, and we have dinner together, and discovered, well, most of our kids are not eating well at home. I discovered when I fed them eggs and ham and toast or potatoes or whatever, they actually can get involved in the study.”
• John Lopez on what Colombia needs: “I think we need hope. We have a lot of dreams. And we are looking for hope in those dreams and we are looking for start to make it real. And for a lot of people, the narco trafficking has been a way to meet these dreams. And it is ugly here. And we have a lot of problems because that I feel that, and it is my feeling, I could be wrong, but I feel that in the past that groups have an ideology to fight, but now it is just money.”
• Laurie Lopez: “Colombia has been a Catholic nation and we see devout Catholics, but we also see people that are Catholic because of Colombia. And there’s just this one Catholic. What more do I need? They’re also coming really strongly into the Protestant side. There’s a lot of prosperity teaching. And so going into that, I want to create hope. And it’s by financial gain. And the church is telling me it’s possible and people are just ripe for that message here.”
• John Lopez: “Normally, it’s rare to see very stable families. Just one has dad and mom together. The rest of them are grandparents taking care of grandchildren or great grandchildren. Men, they use a lot of drugs and alcohol. They are not a presence. Moms work more than they need to in a day. And there are kids by themselves in the house and in the streets. I think it is that dynamic. We have a need here for men to be made, to be responsible, to take care of the children, of the people. Men don’t want to take responsibility. And I guess using drugs and beer is just to escape from that reality.”
• What advice would you give to people wanting to serve in Colombia? 1) Learn Spanish. 2) Don’t fight the culture. Be prepared to be open, but don’t expect people to be open. 3) If you want to share a little bit of your culture here, enjoy, but be cautious. Cautious and be creative, I would say, and invite people and don’t push your culture to the people because our food is simple. 4) Don’t expect Colombians to be punctual. 
• What ministry opportunities exist in Colombia? “Business is an opportunity, to provide income for families, and to have an environment for ministry. Kids want to learn English here. But there’s opportunity for ministry with kids currently living on the street. Yeah, there’s a lot of areas that don’t have a solid evangelical church. So somebody who wants to do church planting there could work with indigenous. Yeah, there’s a great need in this country and there’s great need in our ministry as well.” They need teachers who have a heart for kids. 

*Header photo by Pixabay of Medellin, Colombia. John and Laurie talk about this area in the video.