I’ve been so bad about blogging that it’s hard to know where to start at this point, so I’m just going to share some highlights. Since the last time I blogged:
We painted a building at La Quinta that will become a feeding center
We celebrated Children’s Day and Father’s Day in Nicaragua
I received an apron as a gift from a very old woman named María Vicente
We met a girl named Alba who has been married for three years, has a one year old daughter, and is only 16. We’ve been back to visit her a bunch of times, and she seems to really want people to talk to. One of the girls on my team bought her a Bible that she took to her today!
We met a man named Juan Carlos and his daughter Caterín, who has chronic kidney problems and needs surgery because her body can’t process a lot of foods and she has severe allergies that cause her to swell and be unable to walk. Keep them in your prayers…it is expensive to buy the special things she can eat, but they don’t have enough money for the surgery she needs either.
We ate delicious street tacos
We got caught in town in some serious rain and accidentally skipped youth church…
We saw Transformers 3 in Managua and were frozen by the air conditioning
We piled 15+ people in the back of a tiny burnt orange pick-up truck multiple times
We celebrated the Fourth of July with red white and blue outfits, an “American” dinner (consisting of hot dogs and hamburgers, guacamole and chips (more American than you might think since the Nicaraguans use eggs in theirs), macaroni and cheese, and rice krispie treats), a water fight, and fireworks
We prayer-walked seven times around each barrio we work in and met, prayed with, and invited so many precious people to church services and the “house churches” that we’re working on starting
I went to two Nicaraguan hospitals with one of my teammates because both of our leaders were gone for the day, and I almost had to translate. Thank goodness Emma got there in time for her third and fourth hospital visits of the day.
We’ve played with a lot of adorable children
We’ve celebrated two Nicaraguans’ birthdays and two teammates’ birthdays
I’ve been to the Pacific Ocean for the first time (in a van that puts any CSBC van to shame) and ridden a horse down the beach
I saw three of my teammates get baptized in the ocean!
We celebrated Children’s Day again
We helped a family wash dishes and do laundry (after spending a lot of time going to houses to ask if we could help and getting a lot of blank stares and questions or just nos.)
We spent a day intensely training to play in a soccer tournament, played in the first day of the tournament (which turned out to be way more intense than we thought…entry fees and everything), and placed third out of three teams.
All of these things have become normal. La Quinta Esperanza, Diriamba, Carazo, Nicaragua feels like home right now. As I think about going home, I just keep thinking how weird it will be. To have a room to myself, a double bed, air conditioning, a washing machine, a dishwasher. To drive my car on paved roads, be able to go places by myself, be able to flush toilet paper, not have rice and beans with every meal. We just turned off the lights in our room for the night, and as I’m typing this there are all kinds of gnats, flies, and who knows what else swarming to the light of my computer screen. It seems like going home should be going back to “normal,” but that’s not what it feels like, and I don’t think that’s what I want it to be. When I get home, I don’t just want to be who I was. I think I’ve learned things on this trip, and I want that to affect what my life looks like when I get back. I’ve learned a lot about living and loving in intense community. I’ve learned to be confident in who I am in Christ and to be more open both with people I’ve come to know and love (my teammates) and with the people that I meet. I’ve learned to be content in waiting and listening for God and not always knowing his plans. I’ve been reminded that he is faithful to keep his promises and that he delights in the joy of his children. I know that he will not give me a task that he does not equip me to complete.
