-
Connie: Connie is the lady who made us mango deliciousness when we visited her. She also let the girls have a slumber party at her house. It was so awesome! We got to watch movies, eat fruit and hang out. Connie is full of so much spunk, love for people but most importantly love for Jesus. There was something about her that allowed me to be free around her. I felt like a small child in her presence; all she desired was to make us happy and make us feel at home. Connie also has an amazing son, who made us all beautiful bracelets before we left. Leaving Connie was the first time I cried leaving a country on the race. I’ll never forget the first time we went to visit her and she hollered at us from her shower. Then she poked her head out, told she would just be a minute, and continued to converse with us from the shower.
-
Communication Fast: While I was in Nicaragua I was fasting from the internet and man did I learn a lot. It’s amazing how much time we can waste/kill/spend on the internet. The amount of free time I suddenly found myself with was unreal. All this free time allowed me time to focus on our ministry, focus on my relationship with the Lord and focus on getting to know the people I was doing ministry with. Also, by not having the internet to escape to, I learned that living in community is not always as easy and fun as it would appear (more to come on that later).
-
Antonio: The story of Antonio is still a difficult story to tell; yet, it’s had the largest impact on my life thus far. In the town next to ours the youth group had gone to the ocean and one of the youth, Antonio, was swept out by the undercurrent. The next day, they still hadn’t found the body. Three people from my squad had been praying and had a vision of three of us walking along the beach, praying and finding the body. So, we did, that night; but we didn’t find Antonio. After running into Antonio’s father, uncle and family friend we went to dinner and they invited us out for the next morning’s search party. Some of us had begun losing hope in finding the body; it had been over 2 days since he had been swept away. After cruising around for an hour we parked the boat at an island and split up to search. Not 5 minutes later we were being waved across the island. It was about 8am. We ran with everything we had and sure enough, there was Antonio’s body. Washed up about 200 feet from the morning tide line. All we could do was fall down on our knees and praise God for answering our prayers to bring the body out of the ocean. We were so far away from the original location that his body was swept under at that we couldn’t even catch a glimpse of that area from where we were at. There was so much more that happened that day and through all of it I learned some amazing lessons: some of which I can’t even put to words. I was reminded that God hears and answers our prayers, in His timing. I learned that sometimes God asks us to pray for things that seem impossible and even though it might not make sense to us, God honors our obedience. God honors the faith that we have in Him. God continued to remind me that faith is believing in what seems impossible and believing in things that we can’t yet see.
Nicaragua was an amazing time of getting to know people and re-learning how big God truly is. As Nicaragua came to a close, I could just feel that big things were going to happen in San Salvador, El Salvador.
