I’ve been so distracted with two back to back all squad months and not having wi-fi where we live that I’m seriously behind on blogs so I will be attempting to catch up this month!
Last month in Nicaragua we worked with REAP ministries aka, “The Farm”. REAP stands for: RESTORE EDUCATE ACTIVATE AND PERPETUATE. This place was incredible and they have so many ministries to reach their communities. Our days never looked the same. We rotated morning and afternoon tasks daily which consisted of prayer walks, uprooting plantain trees, sports ministry, dump ministry (where I gave my first sermon), planting 900 moringa trees (in 6 hours!), cleaning up the property, and visiting patients in the hospital.
We had a set time in our schedule from 6am-7am to study the Bible which was so nice! Three days a week we woke up at 5 am for corporate prayer which consisted of us praying, journaling, listening to music, and watching the sunrise. To be honest, when they initially told us we would be waking up at 5am I wasn’t happy, but by the end of the month I looked forward to having two hours of time to just sit with the Lord. I was starting my day off with the Lord and not ending it with Him (I’m REALLY not a morning person and don’t feel like I can give Him my best when I first wake up) I could tell that I was much more focused on Him during the day.
We worked with some truly incredible people in Nicaragua! Julio was one of them, he was our translator and he impacted our team in such a huge way. His joy and boldness were contagious! Julio didnt wait for us to volunteer to pray or give a sermon, he would just call us out and tell us to do it and not to be afraid. He showed us what it looks like to pour into a community and be willing for the Lord to use you in any moment. He made time to just hangout with us by playing ping pong, going on a hike, and taking us to the fancy grocery store just because he loves us. Don’t tell the other teams but I know we were his favorite! We all cried when it was time to say goodbye and although it was hard, I realized I wanted these goodbyes in every country because that meant that I was doing something right.
Costa Rica
Jacó, Costa Rica..
This month was a good one. Our ministry hosts were so welcoming and they spent the month pouring into us and speaking life over us. We started each day with a morning “stretch”… I was pretty excited about this until I realized Stephanie’s idea of stretching was a full body workout.
Each day looked a bit different which kept us on our toes. We cleaned up a local park and built a soccer field with hundreds of tires, we planned and put together a carnival themed VBS event for all the kids, we worked with the local church and helped them on their campus, we worked on the base that we lived at by painting, digging ditches for water tanks, building stairs out of dirt and cement blocks, and we prayer walked!
After the first week of ministry, our squad took a bus up to San Jose for Awakening. Awakening is when multiple squads in different months of the race come together to pour into each other and receive teaching from some pretty awesome guest speakers from AIM. Shout out to Mama K, so glad I got to know you better! Our squad learned some valuable lessons at Awakening that set us up for the rest of the year and I’m super thankful for this time!
Jacó is such a beautiful city and the Lord’s presence is so evident! I look forward to following Oceans Edge and possibly returning to see the contant progress they are making!
**My team and I are now in Panama and my heart is so happy! We have wi-fi in our house so I will be posting a few more blogs this week so I can catch up!
Sending love,
H
