A brief account of the last 3 days (Crazy!!!)

As Jason wrote earlier, we had a crazy accident in Samaipata. We were visiting a wildlife refuge outside of town and Juanita was riding a horse for her very first time. The lady led her on the horse and then let her go to finish the ride. Somehow about 100 yards from where we were all standing, the horse turned around and began to run toward us. It began to run faster and faster until it was racing past us. Juanita's foot slipped out of one of the stirrups and she came flying off and fell on her left side. She was unconscious for about 5 minutes as we tried to assess her. Thankfully, we had 2 nurses with us and Carlette and Nancy were able to keep her stable and assess the situation. She was carried by ambulance with Vanessa and Carlette back to Santa Cruz. She has one broken rib and a bruised lung. They are observing her at the hospital and will probably release her tomorrow. Thank you for your support and prayers. It could've been much worse, but God really carried all of us! A little shaken up, the rest of us stayed in Samaipata to finish the retreat. Despite the craziness of the day, God really blessed our time. To give you a brief overview of the retreat, each day we had worship (in spanish and english) and a speaking session where several of us shared our testimonies and spoke on how God can do infinitely more than we could ask or think in our lives. We encouraged them to rely on his power and love in our lives and not our own strength. For the second session of the day we had support group sessions talking about self worth and forgiveness. The first day, after the support group session, one of the girls from the transition home, Carolean, accepted Christ! Last night after the accident we had a foot washing service where we washed the ladies feet. It was a very sweet emotional time as we served the ladies. They seemed very humbled by us serving them. And today when we had a closing share time, one of the staff of the transition home shared that seeing us serve gives her a stronger passion to serve. They all seemed very blessed by our time together. I had an opportunity to spend a lot of time with Eli, the counselor of the transition home, and I feel God ordained for our hearts to connect. She became our only translator after Vanessa left. She loved the material we were teaching and seemed eager to learn all she could and opened up a lot to me. I am looking forward to working with her in the future and helping her in any way I can to get the girls the help they need to heal from emotional hurts. All in all, we know that God has every member of this team here for a reason, and He has used us in crazy ways we never thought on this trip. Thank you for your prayers! There is still more to come!