Ometepe, Nicaragua 11/13/10
It took about 50hrs to drive and sail through four countries to get here, but Cicrin home for youth is well worth it! Team lovebound is again on a lake surrounded by volcanos in such a beautiful place. We are on a small farm with dorms and an open rest area that goes right to the edge of the lake. Every night we see picturesque sunsets and fireflies that come out at dusk. After last month this almost seems like a trick but our first night here proved that as amazing as this place is, it has its flaws. A swarm of gnats so thick people were choking on them covered this place. Because the bugs are so small and there are many holes in the old screens on our windows our rooms slowly became flooded with them! I requested a mosquito net and thank God they had an extra but I didn’t know that the bugs could crawl right through. We woke up to the walls, floors, beds, and ourselves COVERED in tiny bugs. Disgusting. And oh yeah, after they die they stink like fish. Fortunately the plague only lasted the one night (and lets hope it stays that way) because I honestly don’t know what I would do if we had to deal with gnats in our hair, clothes, beds etc. for a whole month. I would probably cry… a lot. p.s. the little spots are ALL bugs.
The dry season has come and with it a water shortage (we lose all plumbing water from afternoon till evening in our dorms, 10 girls sharing bathrooms gets interesting) which means less work for us in the garden. Because of there being more time for leisure than we expected to have here we started to feel guilty. We even talked in depth during our nightly team meeting about being more motivated to work and taking the initiative to find something to do when there seems to be nothing. The next day we gathered for our morning devotional and read from a book called Jesus calling that has been absolutely spot on in terms of what we are facing and feeling each day…its almost kind of scary how consistently right it has been. What did our devotional say? Rest! Rest is a gift from God and after treading uphill He was gifting us with much needed down time. Feelings of guilt sometimes creep in but guilt is not of the Lord, we cannot find our value in works, only in his love for us not based on us but on His goodness. WOW! We were all again in awe having struggled with the idea of rest just the night before. Are missionaries supposed to rest? Apparently whatever God has next for us will require well rested people ready to work. Still having trouble letting go of my works mentality I went to ask Robert what we could do in the garden that day. He said “Can you just hang out? Do you need to work? I feel like I’m just finding stuff for you to do but the garden don’t really need anything but water which we don’t have right now.� Again, WOW. That did it for me, for all of us, we would have to just chill out and slow down. How sad for us to neglect a gift from the Lord. We could still pour into the kids but God often calls us to works that don’t look like what we anticipated. Slowing down that day was such a blessing because I could finally catch up on much needed rest, and time with the Lord. One would think that being a missionary we are always focused on the Lord and true we think about him constantly but thinking about Him is quite different from listening or inviting Him in to guide or teach us.
Challenges for this month:
1. Enjoy God’s blessing of leisure and peace and find the line between relaxing and being lazy (avoid laziness)
2. Learn to practice patience and love with teenagers who try consistently to annoy me and sometimes hurt my feelings. Practice being in their shoes and just loving them anyways.
3. Take more steps in faith not just acknowledging spiritual warfare (lies from the enemy, negative thoughts) but to Do something about it.
4. Learn to be valued by God because He is good and loves me, not because of me or my works.
5. focus, really focus on the Lord and incorporate my day into Him, not Him into my day.
