We are over halfway through month two already and I am more in love with this trip than ever before. Nicaragua has my heart. I love it here. We started off the month with debrief in Granada. It is such a beautiful city. Somewhere I would love to come back and visit one day. All 46 members of our squad plus our coaches (Jimmie and Sharon) and our squad mentor (Chrissy) were at debrief. Basically, what debrief consisted of, was just talking about how our first month went with our leadership team. We gave them feedback on how we felt we were doing in our teams and they gave us feedback on how we could improve. We had a lot of free time during those five days of debrief and were able to explore the beautiful city and its colonial style buildings. The colors and the atmosphere of the town were immaculate, but my heart was still heavy seeing children on the streets begging for food or prostitutes coming in and out of the hostel my squad and I were staying at. Even though those few days we were in Granada were a time for us to relax and unwind from our first month of ministry, God still provided us many opportunities to share His love with those in the city that we saw needed Him most.
From being invited over to prostitute’s house and having them ask us to pray over them to giving kid’s slices of my pizza as I was eating dinner, I think my squad and I brought a little more hope to the community that they were craving while we were there.
After debrief was over, we all loaded on a bus to head a few hours north to our ministry location for the month. This has been an all squad month so all 46 of us have been staying at a compound in Chinandega and doing ministry together. We split up into two different groups (since there are so many of us) and go off throughout the day to do different kinds of ministries. Some of the things we have been doing is door to door ministry where we go around in neighborhoods and share the love of Jesus to people that live there, asking if they have a relationship with Him or if they have any questions that we could answer and sharing some of our personal stories with them. We end the conversation by asking to pray with them and that is where I have really seen God show up. People with hardened hearts at the beginning of our conversations are weeping by the end of our prayer and whole families are deciding to repent and live their lives for God and go to church together who had never done so before. Only God could be working in their lives like this. We have also been working in medical clinics that give free medical appointments and medications out to those who need it. On Sunday’s we share our testimonies, lead worship and give messages to those in churches we visit. This past Sunday I had the opportunity to share the story of the prodigal son in Luke with some people at the church we were at that day. It was way out of my comfort zone but God gave me the strength and the courage to get up in front of the people and it lead to a girl asking us to pray for her that she would turn her life around and begin living for God again. All of the testimonies and the stories that morning fit together in a really cool way that made the message complete.
What I love most about this month is getting out into the community more to build relationships with those around me. Our ministry host had a close friend pass away last week and he invited us to attend the funeral if we wanted to. I decided to go. There were so many people attending this funeral and some that I had met from other encounters while doing ministry during the week. Even though I didn’t personally know the girl that passed away, it was awesome to get to be there for not only our ministry host who was going through a hard time with the loss of his friend but also other friends in the town that we had made from doing ministry and just showing our support and love for them.
God has been doing a lot in my heart in this beautiful country. We still have a few weeks left here and I can’t wait to see what else He has in store for me and my squad.
My next financial deadline is November 30th and I need to reach $13,000. I am only about $322 away from reaching that goal. I would appreciate it so much if you are able and willing to generously partner with me on this journey with God and make a financial contribution.
Thank you so much for the continued prayers and support, they are definitely felt and needed during this period of growth God has me in. I will keep you updated with another blog soon on how the rest of our month finishes out and when we get to our next country, Honduras.
