Reflections and learning from Bryan Theisen – Colombia, September 2024

I think every graduate of film school dreams of the day they can produce a long form documentary and share it with the world! What an opportunity to multiply the influence of a story as people around the world see it. So, when we began dreaming about filming a documentary to celebrate the 25th year of Langham in Columbia you can imagine I was pretty excited about it! We had planned to visit three pastors in their context to see how the training equipped them for ministry and then film segments of the conference.

On the first day in Bogota, we learned of a protest happening because of unfair gas prices; many of the large roads out of the city were barricaded preventing people from leaving and stopping shipment trucks into the city. With that news, we learned we would not be traveling and filming in the remote locations we had planned. We spent a few days in Bogota capturing short stories to share on social media, but I had a full studio of equipment packed away that wasn’t being used; needless to say, I was discouraged.

Having already spent a week away from my house on a bike tour, and a family stay in Mackinaw I was wanting to be home and feeling like anyone on the team could have recorded these phone stories. After a night of feeling discouraged and praying, “Holy Spirit, show me how I could uniquely contribute to the trip.” I fell asleep and woke up the next day excited to see how that prayer would be answered.

On Sunday afternoon, we traveled by plane from Bogota to Medellin where the conference would begin on Monday. Sunday, I was able to capture the opening prayer that set the vibe for what this week would hold for everyone; then I stayed up late into the night editing.

Monday was the first day of the conference and I came equipped with my big camera and ready to put that luggage to work! In the morning session I captured some clips here and there and eventually connected with the crew broadcasting the conference. Through broken English/Spanish and using Google translate I offered to plug my camera into their system so the online audience could have a better view of the speakers. And then, through hand signals and pointing, I was able to serve their team by running a camera during the speakers’ presentation.

Philippians 2:5-7 comes to mind as I put aside what I thought I would be doing, and I took up the position of running a camera to serve these amazing guys.