The above photo is the Panamanian Baptist Seminary Building which the team was yesterday afternoon. The Class that I am teaching is on Church Planting. The text is of course the Book of Acts. 15 Students were there to learn how and why and what to do about how to plant new churches. How to give your personal testimony was emphasized and practiced by the class including the special guest students from the USA.
The visit to the Seminary gave the team the opportunity to see first hand the great need for help in the areas of maintenance and repairs that the buildings are in desperate need of at this time. Painting, Plumbing,electrical and concrete work are badly needed to improve the quality and atmosphere of this place of learning and life change.
The team will be starting their 4th day in Panama and have now become well adapt at prayer walking, mapping, the culture and the need of the city for churches. The team has been able to see the strategy of the missionaries and now are in the last two days of this trip looking for ways and the places that they may be able to plug into the work of the Urban Panama Team.
Yesterday also included a mapping of about one square mile of city streets. It was a unique experience as the team had traveled the area but there was so much that was not noticed until we actually walked thre through the streets with a very intentional goal of seeing what is there.
What was found? People lots of people. Lots of businesses and apartments. And mixed in are lots of nice homes. It is not uncommon for a beautiful home with a nice fenced yard with lavish landscaping to be next door to a 40 story high rise apartment building. You can see this in the top right corner of the photo of Linda walking with mapping in hand. And across the street from here is a fence where there is yet another high rise under construction.
