I wondered that myself before I came down here. A lot of people have asked me what I would be doing, and I always gave rather vague answers, so here’s a glimpse at what a DTS is actually like.
Every week day we have class from 9-12 or 12:30. This week the classes were on hearing the voice of God. It was both a challenging and an encouraging week. The Bible is clear that God will guide his children (John 10:27, Isaiah 30:21, Proveerbs 3:5&6). This week we talked about what we should do to prepare our hearts to hear God- trust that he will speak, surrender our will, be humble, and spend time listening to him. We also looked at Biblical passages that show ways in which God has spoken to his people. I think it was a week that encouraged all of us to walk closer to God and listen to him more carefully.
When we’re not in class, we do, oh, just about everything. There are work duties (I set out breakfast foods and clean up afterwards), times of worship and prayer, Spanish conversation practice, homework, and plenty of time to walk to the park and play on the playground equipment and watch people play soccer, or walk to the local pulperia and buy snack foods.
Wednesday night some of us went to a shelter in the evening. When we got there it turned out another group beat us there and they didn’t need us, so we took our food out into the street looking for homeless people to share it with. After passing just 1 or 2 obviously homeless people on the street, we stopped to give them some food. I figured we would move on somewhere else, but word spread like wildfire that we were there. I don’t think we were there much more than 15 or 20 minutes before our food ran out, and we must have served at least 30 people. I wished we had been able to chat with people instead of just serving food, but it didn’t work out that night. Seeing so many people (some of them very young- there was one guy who said he had just turned 18) come out of nowhere was sad. I wonder how many homeless there are in San Jose.
Thursday afternoons are set aside for local outreach. This Thursday we went to a local park to pick up trash. Parque de la paz has a giant hill in the center, and there must always be a breeze up there because it has a reputation as a great place to fly kites. There were a lot of families out enjoying the day, flying kites, and sliding down the hill on cardboard boxes. When you never get snow, you have to be creative. Our group of probably attracted attention as it was (especially since we were speaking English and Spanish and Scott had 2 of his blonde boys along), but Reanna made sure we got some more. There’s a chant that translates roughly, “Let’s go so-and-so, don’t be afraid, show us your moves. Up, chili, chili, down chili chili, by your toes chili chili” Each time you choose a different person’s name they choose a move and everyone mimics it. We chanted the whole way back through the park.
Friday nights are Freeman Family Fun night. All of us go to Scott’s house, and basically are required to make fools of ourselves. Last night everyone sat in a circle, except the person who was “it”. Their task was to try to make someone laugh. Whoever laughed first had the next turn in the center. Great way to spend time with people you just met a week ago, no?
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