Gangs

Some Good News

Gangs, Language Learning, Training, YWAM -

The newspapers in El Salvador often contain very bad news. Soaring murder rates, hundreds of youth dead, students afraid to go to school, gang violence on the rise, drugs, deliquency…and on and on. But today I have some good news about the youth in El Salvador. Five Latin American students have committed to spend the next five months living and working with our Youth With A Mission staff. They’v made this committment because they want to seek God’s plan for their life, consider His call on their future, and be mentored along the way. Our DTS this year consists of one student from Ecuador and five from El Salvador. I personally am super excited because I will be working closely with this school. I am looking forward to the chance to […]

Sobering Statistics

Gangs, Kids at Risk, Urban Ministry -

This morning I opened up the La Prensa newspaper here in San Salvador to find some very sobering statistics. The official statistics about the homicides of 2010 have been released. The statistics are sobering. To give you an idea of the problem with violence in El Salvador, here are a few things to consider: There were 4, 005 murders last year in El Salvador. In a country of nearly 7 million, there are 64.7 homicides for every 100,000 people. That’s a higher murder rate than Colombia, than Venezuela, and even higher than Mexico which has been in the news quite a lot lately concerning the violent crime that is present there. An overwhelming number of those who are murdered are men. Young men. Men between the ages of 15 and […]

Street Ministry Christmas Party

Family, Gangs, Holidays, Kids at Risk, Third Culture Kids, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

We are Stateside right now enjoying our first vacation since we started our work in El Salvador! We are having a great time relaxing with our family and just getting a break, but we have had some “culture shock” which I’ll write about in a later post. I just wanted to share with you a few photos from our Street Ministry Christmas party. We shared a Christmas dinner with the guys that was catered by chefs who are friends from our church, spoke to them briefly about why we celebrate Christmas, and gave them some gifts. They were many joyous faces, and we took the opportunity to get to know these guys better.   The delicious turkey dinner ready to go! In El Salvador turkey (pavo in Spanish) is the […]

The Other Side of Immigration

Gangs, Immigration, Kids at Risk, Life in El Salvador -

I am home today with two very sick kids who are fighting the last of the stomach virus that they had all weekend. Our friends Jeff and Lynn Beans are here for two weeks, and we went to the beach with them. Unfortunately, a nasty stomach bugs seems to be making it’s way through our house just as Tropical Storm Matthew is making it’s way through Central America. Not a great beach combination, but we managed to have fun anyway! Today the Beans are at CIPI, one of the state-run orphanages, volunteering with Jon and I am on “sick kid” duty all day! Since I am stuck on the couch with the kids, I was doing some reading in the Baltimore Sun about an immigration case that is currently hot […]

No Fear

Gangs, Kids at Risk, Life in El Salvador, Prayer, Thinking About God, Urban Ministry -

Today was a strange day in San Salvador. For one thing, there weren’t many buses running. I noticed that this morning on my way downtown. I also noticed that I needed to stop by a school and office supply store (called a Liberia) to get a few things for the kids for school. It took me awhile because most of them were closed. Something else was strange when I stopped at the grocery store. There were military all over the parking lot. So, what’s going on? The government in El Salvador recently passed a law making it a crime to belong to a gang. The gangs don’t like this so they issued widespread threats today causing an uproar. Buses stopped running because gang members threatened to carjack them, or burn […]

Sometimes It Seems Hopeless

Gangs, Justice, Kids at Risk, Prayer, Thinking About God, Urban Ministry -

The thing about working in a third world country is that there are days that seem really hopeless. Days where person after person comes up to us asking for money. Days when everywhere we turn there seems to be someone else in desperate need. It’s hard not to get discouraged and feel really low when so many around us are hurting.   To be totally honest, it’s really draining. Daily we see people in need surrounding us, but the last few days have just really impacted me. Last night I went out on the streets of San Salvador to talk to some of the prostitutes that work there. Doing this is way out of my comfort zone, but I am so glad I went. Every young woman I talked to has at […]

Worlds Apart

Crossing Cultures, Gangs, Thinking About God -

Yesterday was one of those days for me. One of those days when I feel the contrast between myself and those who have grown up in El Salvador. My “previous life” in suburban America is worlds apart from the experiences of the people of San Salvador. I heard a young woman share her life story. It was a story filled with pain and with loss. The pain of never having a secure family life, the pain of wanting to belong anywhere even if it meant joining a gang, and the pain of having lost almost every person close to her because of the violence that fills the streets of El Salvador. But there is more to her story. There is hope because someone shared the truth of Jesus Christ. Someone changed […]

Desperate Measures

Gangs, Justice, Kids at Risk -

I just finished reading a tragic story in the news of the desperate measures taken by one family because they had nothing to eat.  The family had no food left and so they decided their only recourse was to eat seed corn that had been distributed by the government. The problem was that the seed corn had been heavily treated with pesticides and it was not meant for human consumption. The family was desperate so they washed the corn thoroughly and used it to make tortillas. The whole family ended up in the hospital and two of the children, aged 10 and 12, died as a result. This is the link to the article in Spanish: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/el-salvador/social/130983-dos-fallecidos-por-ingerir-semilla-mejorada.html I read a lot of sad stories on the Salvadoran news sites. Stories […]

Dying in the Streets

Gangs, Justice, Kids at Risk, Life in El Salvador, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

This week we read some sad statistics about El Salvador. This past Sunday, there were a record 23 homicides in the country of El Salvador in one day alone. In the first six days of June, 85 people were killed. The average number of homicides each day in El Salvador has been bumped up to 14 per day. That’s fourteen people each day literally dying in the streets of El Salvador. And this is a country of only 7 million people. El Salvador consistently has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.  These statistics make me sick to my stomach and they break my heart. Jon personally saw one of the “14 per day” last week in Apopa. A teenager dead on the street, lying in a pool […]

Beach Day with Apopa Kids

Gangs, Kids at Risk, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

Each Tuesday and Thursday, Jon and the rest of the YWAM staff work in the town of Apopa.  This is a town just outside of San Salvador that is known for being terribly violent. It has a high rate of gang related violence. We help a local church in Apopa with a lunch program that they have where they feed 150 kids from the community Monday-Thursday. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do a Bible lesson in the morning, help with the lunch, and then do a  basic literacy program in the afternoons. The kids who are accepted into the “school” are those who can’t go to public school because they have no birth certificates. Kids must have documentation to attend school. These kids are at risk for future problems. […]

Search

Categories

Mini Cart 0

Your cart is empty.