Hey everyone!
Hope you are all enjoying your Fall season! We are for sure loving this beautiful time of year. My wife has never experienced the season of Fall and it is so exciting to be with her and watch the leaves change to such beautiful colors and feel the temperature cool off as Winter approaches!
As Summer is over, we wanted to share with you about our Summer. We had written about what we had done in the Mexico/Texas mission trip plus the Spanish Family Camp in Iowa, if you haven´t read it yet then click here to read it. Our last thing that we had scheduled for our Summer was a 5 week trip to Indiana.
We left my parents house in Iowa to head to Indiana at the very end of August and we just arrived back to Iowa a couple days ago. We enjoyed our time with my brother and his family and also were blessed with our time with DAT House, which is the non-profit ministry that they are involved in.
During our time in Indiana, we had the opportunity to connect with DAT House and serve in two different capacities. They trained me to be a barista and I helped them at the coffee shop that they have inside their community center. That was a really fun experience for me. I love coffee and it was cool to be able to learn a bit more about it and new ways to prepare it plus it was just really special to see how they were using the coffee shop, not with a business/profit focus, but with a focus to bring an impact to the neighborhood through the everyday interactions. I love the idea of using business as a ministry tool and it was a good example for me to be hands on during our time there.
The other thing that we helped out with was with an After-School program they are running at the nearby public school. They use to run this program out of their community center but this was the first year where the school gave permission to use an open classroom in the school and have access to the gym and cafeteria. The ministry leaders were pumped at that open door and it was a great space to do the program with those kids. The After-School Program is for K-6th grade and we had a good group of kids. Each day varied to where we sometimes had 5 kids but for the most part there were around 12-15 kids participating Monday-Thursday at the program. We enjoyed our time with those kids. Mar did an awesome job of doing some art projects with them and I enjoyed playing a lot of sports with the boys! Our last day with them was a field trip day where we went to a pumpkin patch on a farm that started in like 1870 or something like that. It was a good last day with the kids.
Besides our time in Indiana, we had two quick trips to Nashville, TN and to Columbus, OH. I was excited that it worked out to go to the wedding of my best friend and be one of his groomsmen. We did a quick day and a half trip to Columbus, Ohio to celebrate that special day with him and his bride! We also visited them on our way back from Indiana with a quick stop in Springfield, Missouri. We really enjoyed our time with them. Such a beautiful couple, on fire for God and dedicated to serve Him together in their marriage. We also enjoyed a trip to Nashville, TN for Mar´s birthday. Her best friend from Colombia married a man from the USA and they are living in Nashville. We enjoyed our time with them and were so blessed by their hospitality plus it was great for Mar to enjoy her birthday with her best friend.
So ends our Summer.. We are very thankful for these last weeks. We have seen God bring us into many new places and opportunities this year and this Summer and in each new place or new thing we have done, we see God´s faithfulness in teaching us more about who He is and who we are in Him. We thank you guys for your prayers for all of our travels and ministry times during these last months. We have been so honored by your love and so thankful for you joining us and being apart of each ministry time.
We are now going to be spending our last 3 months mainly in Iowa. For those of you who are here in NW Iowa and surrounding areas, we would love to meet up and share with you! We would love to hear from you if you have any questions or any desire to meet up.
Thanks so much and God bless!
-Taylor & Mar Friesen, YWAM Colombia
Tay&Mar to Colombia! 