FAITH -- HOPE -- LOVE , life stories by Ileana Ortiz

JUNE HAS COME AND WITH IT THE NEXT PHASE FOR REOPENING CHURCH... The awaited time where all interns would serve together once again would take place, the purés form of intership was lived. A long side with the vision of church and fully supporting our leadership we said ¨Here I am¨. No one had an idea of how it would look like, all we did know was that our hearts for those who have missed in person church needed it (i needed it), with our safety social restrictions in place we welcomed everyone and it was as exhausting as expected lol. The first two sundays I did nothing but go home a sleep, felt like I´ve ran a marathon, even though I have never run one nor I plan to lol. However, the emotional exhaustion was not there, quiet the opposite, I found I had a full heart. Every Sunday I have been expected to see people I usually would only see on Sunday, however I have come to find that not everyone is ready for physical church and that’s ´s ok. Is a reminder to me of how reaching out thro...

MAY It has only been the 5th month of 2020 and so much has happened already. And to think that I’m doing life alongside people I have never being in the same room at once. I’m also grateful for our leadership´s wisdom to guide us and identify how this cohort is different from others and set boundaries and guidelines on our communication until we are able to build in person relationship equity.  Specially with all the opinions and perspectives around POC,  other’s intentions can and will be miss interpret really wrong and really fast. I know at least I was, I could already see how I was drifting from interacting with specific people due to their comments disguised as prayers, and it just wast not feeling good about it. I had to repent of passing judgment to people I don´t even know, not really anyways.       My heart truly pumps for “I Love This City” project,  since starting my internship I keep searching on how my personal ministry looks like within c...

A whole new world I moved to Minnesota 4 years 3 months and 15 days ago. Over the past few years I’ve embraced that one of my super powers is Adaptation. My resiliency to cope with difficult times comes in handy as well, so when I moved to a new culture a lot of things changed, I had a lot of shifts in the perspectives of my core beliefs, one of them is how I view my birthday month. It has also been 4+ years since I’ve celebrated my birthday face to face with any blood family, I’ve only celebrated it with my family by choice (until 2020 and the adventures of a year with COVID19). So celebrating it with my family over face time has been the norm and they know how to love me well form a distance, I would like to think I do the same. Celebrating here is different. But I’m grateful for community.  (Pictured: My parents (Francisco and Norma and my brother, Joshua. Not Josue, Joshua, he’s very particular about that lol) During this month our leaders had a great idea to have all of us int...

First Impressions Before sharing how my first month as an intern is going, I would like to share a brief background on what lead me to apply for my church’s internship program. 2019 ended on a bad note, made me realize how unhealthy I was doing relationships by focusing my energy and attention around one friend, a friend who used to say I was family to her small family, unfortunately when it came a time to actually prove I was family I was met with their back to me.  Still surrendering to God the negative thoughts that come as a result form that, I think I’ve come a long way but still working on self confidence when it comes to letting people in on intimate levels. This experience has allowed me to position my heart in full surrendering to God, 100% allowing him to be the only one that satisfies every corner of my been. In the end, He is the only one that can, so now I needed to work on my behaviors to match my knowledge, this is where the Internship Program comes into...