FARC

I have finally finished the first week in the counseling school. We have notebooks to do each week that take up all of our time. I think I used all of my creativity in the first week, who knows where my inspiration will come from next week? But it will be so good. We are having great classes about how people build walls of rebellion or rejection. I love the counseling school because the classes are great, but the school is set up so there is a lot of time to personally process all that you're learning. I'm so excited!

I need to update about the situation in Colombia. One of the biggest rebel groups is called the FARC. It claims to be "for the people" but it actually is a pretty violent group against the government. They kidnap many people, and the numbers are growing. Just recently 11 of 12 politicians that had been kidnapped about 5 years ago were killed. The FARC played it off saying that they were killed in a military attempt to rescue them, but, again, that they really are trying to protect the people. There was no military presence involved thought, these people were just outright murdered. In response to this, Thursday there were peace walks in all of the major cities in Colombia. People came out to pray carrying the Colombian flag to show the government and the world that FARC is violent and does not have the people's support. This group has done a lot of damage, there is not a person in Colombia that has not been personally affected, either in their own family or in the family of close friends. One of our neighbor's wife was kidnapped and they paid ransom for five years only to find out that they had killed her in the first month and continued to make money off her. Please continue to pray for this situation and wisdom for our government.