Leaving Tomorrow!

Tomorrow we fly out of Atlanta to Dulles then to Amsterdam, and we'll arrive in Nairobi at around 8pm Saturday.  Then we have a nice long bus ride to Musul, where we'll be setting up camp (literally) for the next few weeks.

Training camp has been awesome, and I'm already super excited about our team!  We won't have much internet access while we're in Kenya, but I'll be sure to update when we move on to Tanzania.

Pray for unity on our team and continued growth in community.  Pray for safe travels and health while we transition.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Romans 15:13

Thoughts

The other day a link to this blog post (via Passion) popped up on my newsfeed on Facebook, and it really made me think.  The author is a volunteer at Our Own Home orphanage in Uganda.  This is the part that really stuck out to me:

Caring for orphans and children left abandoned is not...done so people can have really “cute” Facebook pictures. It’s the character of God. (Dt. 10:18, Ps. 10:18, Is. 1:17, Ps. 68:5, James 1:27) It’s not simply hugging and laughing with children all day. It’s working with parents and local authorities. It’s giving local men and women a chance for employment and an opportunity to feed their families...We place our hope in the hands of a Defender, and a Rescuer, and a Father...there is hope! Oh there is hope! Jesus died and rose and because of that, there are thousands around the world who respond by giving their life to the defending of the fatherless, the pleading for widows, and the justice of the oppressed.

It stuck out to me because not only can we place our hope in God's hands to care for orphans, but this is why I'm going, and this is why I can trust God with my present and my future.  In a time when I'm a college student, a graduate, a camp counselor, and then all of a sudden I'm going to East Africa with no clue what comes after that (or really much of an idea of what exactly I'll be doing while I'm there), God's character is still constant.


It blows my mind to think about who God is, because the way we understand the words we use to describe him is so limited.  God is good, He is love, He is just.  The way we use those words though is just a tiny, finite, imperfect reflection of an eternal, perfect, constant God. 


My team and I are all coming from different backgrounds, and I'm sure we could all give several reasons why we're headed for East Africa this fall.  But this is ultimately why we're going.  Not because we're going to be perfect at loving orphans or prison inmates or hospital patients.  Not because of our skill at sharing the gospel.  We go because this is who God is.  Ultimately it's not about us at all.

I'm sad (sadder than I really thought I would be) to leave my family, friends, and home for so long, and don't even get me started about how sad I am that I'm missing fall, but I am so pumped to meet my team in 2 days (after I meet my co-leader today!) and to experience everything that God has in store for us.   It will be fun, it will be exciting, and sometimes it will be sad and difficult.

And we can trust that it is good, because that is who He is.

Show me your ways, Lord,
    teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me,
    for you are God my Savior,
    and my hope is in you all day long.

[Psalm 25:4-5]

The viaje continues

[source]

 "All I know is that every time I go to Africa, I am shaken to my core."

[Stephen Lewis]

This continent has a way of really digging into your heart.  There's less than a week left until I leave to meet my co-leader and then my team before we head for Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi!

Almost done...

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.

I'm leaving tomorrow...

And the idea of fitting everything I need for two months into this bag is a little overwhelming:

(The fact that I still haven't really unpacked from family vacation at the beach last week doesn't exactly help...)  So naturally I'm doing this instead.  I do think that I finally have everything I need, though.  Tomorrow morning I head to Tennessee to meet all of my teammates, and then on the 7th we fly to Nicaragua! In honor of my excitement about starting this adventure, here are 5 things I know about Nicaragua [with a little help from Wikipedia], in case you wanted to know:

1. The east coast was an English colony and the west coast was a Spanish colony.  Because of that, the regions are very different and a lot of people on the east coast speak English and a lot of the place names are English. [learned that last semester in a class about "the new Latin American novel"...look at that college education paying off.]
2. The Panama Canal could have gone through Nicaragua [you can practically already get from coast to coast on the water, and apparently someone is still considering building a canal there].
3. It has the nicknames "La tierra de lagos y volcanes" (The Land of Lakes and Volcanoes) and "La tierra de poetas" (The Land of Poets).
4. The currency is called Córdobas and the exchange rate is about 22 Córdobas to 1 USD.
5. In 1990 Violeta Chamorro became the first female president of Nicaragua, as well as the first woman elected president in the Americas.

 This time tomorrow I'll be somewhere in the air between Richmond and Atlanta!

*Edit: It's only 5pm and I'm basically done packing! I think I fit everything in my bag AND it weighs less than 50 pounds. Success! Also, click on the link to the right of the page to read my team's group blog while we're gone (right now it hasn't been updated and just has old posts from the team that came home earlier this month).

The Beginning

I'm going to Nicaragua! This wasn't my original plan for the summer, but God has definitely opened and closed some doors, and here I am!  I'm leaving in barely over two weeks. I'm really not that into the idea of starting a blog, but I thought it would be a good idea for those of you who want to know what is going on for these two months.  No guarantees about how much I'll update, but I think there will be a group blog too that I'll post the link to.  For now, here's something about the trip:

Here's where I'm going:

Jinotepe is in southwest Nicaragua, about 45 minutes south of the capital, Managua, and close to Lake Nicaragua, where there are freshwater sharks(!).  I'm going with about 30 other college students (who I'll meet for the first time when I get to Tennessee for training), and we'll be working in two smaller teams most of the time.  According to what we've been told, we'll be doing a little bit of everything, from visiting hospitals, a senior center and a rehab center, to construction.  We'll be working with ministry hosts who have started a compound in the neighboring slum community that focuses on serving families who live in the dump with a preschool program, feeding programs, and outreaches.

Thanks to all of you who are supporting me, and especially for all of your prayers!