These blogs are a lot harder to write than I imagined them to be. With the lack of access to internet, the blazing heat, our ever changing schedule and the fact that I process things internally it takes a lot to muster up the strength to type out my all over the place thoughts so please forgive my delay in keeping you all up to date.
My team and I have been in Granada, Nicaragua for about 13 days now!! Completely different place from Quiche, Guatemala. Our first 5 days here were spent at team debrief. Our squad coaches and mentors and the media team came down and its like a huge family reunion. We get a lot of free time to refresh before jumping into our new ministry site. We have one on ones with coaches and interviews with the media team about things going on. I love it because its like free therapy. They ask you a lot of tough and personal questions which I never mind answering. Helps me get on with life 🙂
Last week we split off from the rest of the squad and are now spread all over Nicaragua at different ministry sites. My team is at el Puente (the bridge) which is a ministry that runs different ministries from Vida Joven (Young Life), Jicaro Project (self sustaining artisan design business), feeding programs, bible studies etc. This week we get to visit each ministry and will pray about which one God wants us to focus on for the remaining time here. I’ll keep you posted on that.
This has been one crazy week so far. One night my teammate and I stayed up late talking to one of the guards and he shared with us his testimony and how he had experiences with demonic encounters in the past. This led to me sharing my personal experience with similar things but stating that I hadn’t experienced anything like it in almost a year. We went on to talk about other things and closed our conversation out with prayer. My teammate and I walked back to our dorm around 12:30am prayed ourselves to sleep and that was that. For about my week my right knee has been given me problems. Not really understanding why because I hadn’t done anything that would cause injury but that night I woke up to stretch out my legs and my knee was killing me. In that moment I remembered a conversation I was apart of at the prayer retreat I went to before moving to a year prior. One of the girls I was with expressed that she was experiencing random pain in her elbow and couldn’t understand why. Our cabin mom told her that sometimes we experience pain that is not ours but is a means to pray for someone. Laying in bed my mind went from that memory to the thought of one of my relatives who deals with a lot of knee pain currently and has been for a few years. So I prayed for his healing and salvation etc and in a instant my knee pain went away. I laid there wide eyed in disbelief. I kept stretching my knee in and out like “oh my gosh, is this real!?” haha indeed it was, My knee hasn’t hurt since that day. Gracias Jesus Cristo!! 🙂
The next night we head off to bed and the next thing I know I’m woken by some of the girls freaking out because an earthquake was happening. This was a first time for some so it was pretty interesting. After the shock we proceed to go back to our bunk beds and sleep for the night. A couple of hours later I wake up to reposition myself and at one point I was resting on my back but I switched positions because when ever I have slept on my back I have had nightmares so I cut that out real quick but in an instance I found myself having a nightmare. The next thing I know I find myself in what I call the “stuck in between sleep crap.” Basically where I lose the ability to move and speak and other scary things. I’ve had lots of these moments over the years and the only thing I can do is pray in my mind. To call on the name of Jesus repeatedly until I snap out of it accompanied by a loud scream. Like I mentioned before I haven’t had an experience like this in almost a year. I woke my teammates up and they all prayed for me. I won’t lie and say that it was easy for me to go back to sleep. I found myself battling fear. Petrified at the thought of it happening again. I know that Jesus who lives in me is greater than satan who lives in the world, but sometimes I forget that.
That day my team and I all talked about it and a couple of them expressed that they had been feeling a heavy presence around them at night. So again we prayed! Thank God prayer works 🙂
Last night I was able to fall asleep peacefully but found myself suddenly wide eyed awake at 11:30 and just couldn’t go back to sleep. I was laying there starring at the bottom of the top bunk praying for sleep to come but it didn’t. An hour and half later I was still awake. So I prayed for people. I prayed for my family and friends etc. Through tears I remember telling God, “I just want to be a child.” I started remembering how as a child whenever I was afraid at night I would call on my dad and he would come running around the corner. When my parents split I lost that and had to learn how to deal with those moments on my own. Laying in bed last night I told that I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t want to have to deal with this fear on my own. I told him how I can prayer “Father this Father that” and it sounds good but it hasn’t become a reality in my heart. God has promised to be my Father but I haven’t allowed myself to accept that. So in that moment I told God I needed a Father that I know will rescue me in those scary moments and that I was tired of dealing with it on my own.
Eventually I was able to fall asleep and when I woke up to get ready for breakfast and a new day of ministry through a series of events I was led to read Romans 8: 1-17. When I got to verse 15 my heart jumped out of my chest. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive the Spirit on sonship. And by Him we cry, Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” I was blown away by the correlation of fear vs sonship. It didn’t say you haven’t received a spirit of fear but strength, courage, bravery BUT sonship. In my case daughtership. As my Father God is my protector. I’ve known this intellectually for a while but I haven’t received this as my reality. God didn’t bring about the night terrors that cause me fear but I believe He used this moment to show me that He is with me and He is my ultimate Father who can and will protect me but will I receive that truth. Will I allow God into that area of my life to be that ultimate protector against all the whims of satan. On top of that will I fight to believe the truth of the power and authority that God has given me as His child!!
On a lighter note Team debrief is a time for us to stop and catch our breath and refresh before entering into our next month of ministry. With that will come some fun activities that we have can partake in such as volcano ash boarding. I never knew something like this existed. Around 60 of us loaded in 2 vans and journeyed 2 hours to Leon, Nicaragua to Bigfoot Hostel. We then loaded on 2 trucks and drove an hour until we arrived at Volcano Cerro Negro. Upon arrival we learned that this volcano was still active and has erupted about 26 times, was rated #2 on CNNs top adventures list (something like that) and the record breaking speed was 95 kilometers! INSANE!
Check out the video below.
