PANAMA

Panama 150+

It has taken me a good week to fully process the full impact of our Journey Church Kingdom Builder trip to Panama at the end of July.  It was radically life-changing for me and for the 150-plus folks who went with us.

God put a challenge in front of me a year-and-a-half ago:  Put the summons to Journey Church -- 200 people on a Kingdom Builder trip to change a church and to change a generation.  In the end 150 took me up on it and we headed out divided into 9 teams, each with its own leader.

Gerritt & Tara Kenyon - Panama Missionaries

The missionaries:  Gerritt & Tara Kenyon
The mission:  Panama
The target:  Boys & Girls of Panama City

Every day we made our way into schools, performing assemblies with dramas and speaking - at other times playing volleyball/basketball/soccer with the students - still other times passing out free tickets for the main event coming at the end of the weekend.

Four days into the trip we spent our time transforming the Panama City Convention Center into an inviting atmosphere for girls -- cutting thousands of paper flowers -- making flower garlands and giant flower stalks and little flower petals and 'everything flowers' -- blowing up 30,000 balloons -- learning dance routines -- setting up nail polishing stations ...

 

 

 

In another part of the building we constructed a Fun Zone for the boys -- areas for interactive video games -- arm wrestling -- soccer -- an obstacle course -- darts.

The following day the doors to more than a thousand girls and 700 boys bussed in from all over the city who worshipped and heard the Gospel preached.  All of our team members had the opportunity to see and lead scores of students to Christ -- lay hands on them to pray for the baptism in the Holy Spirit -- and give encouragements and hugs through both smiles and tears.

At the end of our time we were thoroughly exhausted but those 12 hour days were worth it - to be part of building the Kingdom of God.

And be blessed.