This month I have been challenged in so many different ways than last month. I will explain this in detail later but first I want to explain what I have been doing this month. We have been living in La Quinta Esperanza which I explained in my last blog. Our main focus of ministry has been children’s and youth ministry. We go to the local barrios and play games with children. A barrio is an extremely poor village that is made of shacks and dilapidated houses and dirt roads that are undrivable to say the least. We ride in the back of a pickup truck to the location where eventually a church will be built. We always have food and games prepared. We play futbol (read: soccer) and other sports with the boys and then we play tag and red light – grean light with the girls. After about an hour and a half of full contact games we feed them. For some of them it looks as though this is there only hot meal of the day. Normally its no more than rice and vegetables but it is warm and filling.
Photo Credit: Christina Palmer
On other days we walk through the barrios with some of the youth from La Quinta and they knock on doors and ask if there is anything that we can pray for them about. Most of the time we are received with open arms and people ask us to pray for them. On one such occasion we were asked to pray for a sick baby. When its mother picked it up you could feel the fever in the child’s body. We began to pray for healing and as we were praying you could feel the temperature in the little body begin to subside. The child also became more docile and began to smile. That day was amazing.
On Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays we go to a different poor village. On Wednesdays and Sundays we have church. Everytime there are anywhere from 30 to 80 children that come and get fed with both food and love.
For me this month has been different in that we do have more free time that we had last month. Last month it was a challenge to make time to spend in prayer, worship, listening to God whereas this time we have had many hours a day but yet I still have to make time to do those things. So for me this month has been a lesson on how to make sure that God is the focus of my life in every moment, whether I am super busy, as I was last month being on call 24-7 living in an orphanage, or whether I have plenty of free time, as I do this month.
Tomorrow we head out of Jinotepe, Nicaragua for Grenada, Nicaragua to reunite with the whole squad for a few days. It will be some time to share stories and to just relax together until we leave for our next ministry location in Costa Rica on December 4th.
Keep mine and my teams fundraising in your prayers. I am currently about $1200 away from being fully funded. (THANK YOU to all my supporters) My team needs different amounts. If you feel led to give please click on their names to the left of my page and click support me.
In Him,
Cody
