WARNING: You will get a “Little Taste of Everything” from this blog post. It is very much all over the place, as hinted in the title.
Palacaguina, Nicaragua
Friday, September 6th
It is currently 5:00 in Palacaguina and I am sitting here after a nice shower taking in all the amazing moments I’ve already had here since arriving early Monday morning. It is incredibly beautiful; the people, the scenery, the special place we will call “home” this month – everything. Sunday’s and Monday’s are our adventure/rest days so we thankfully got to settle in a little on Monday. This month we’ll be rotating around the elementary school, construction at a new church, and helping in the kitchen. So this Tuesday two teammates and I were able to start our week (Tues-Fri) in the school. This looked like loving on kiddos, helping teach English, serving lunch, doing dishes, getting tackled on the playground, and not speaking a lick of English from 8AM-12PM. Today is Friday so this was my last day in the school and I am so excited for my teammates to get to experience all of the love and welcoming smiles I was showered with every second at the school. Let me just tell ya, the language barrier is definitely there but just being able to hug the kiddos and thank the teachers for allowing us to do our thing was so so worth being pushed out of my comfort zone and having to tackle anything they threw at me. Everyone there was so kind and it can be really intimidating spending four hours of your day not knowing where you can help and what people are saying to you.
Yesterday was such a good day, we had the afternoon off because our English lesson was cancelled but we spent it touring the town with our new friend Brianna who just moved here a couple of weeks ago from Virginia. We got some ice cream, went to a thrift store, and played basketball with some locals! We learned one was very fluent in English and studying to be an orthopedic doctor. He was super sweet when talking with us after we kicked the other teams butt (a teammate and I were paired with two of them so we weren’t completely awful lol). Just playing basketball with them and hanging out with the community was such an amazing experience from the Lord. Of course you’ll always have the occasional sketchy people but I never once felt unprotected just between meeting our new friends and people we had said hello to. The people here are good. They have good hearts.
Friday, September 13th
*Insert Spongebob’s ~One Week Later~*
Where to begin… this was my first week in construction! We are helping a pastor we met here, Pastor David (pronounced Da-veed, not Day-vid), add on to his beautiful church we’ve also had the privilege of attending. Last night was a night of worship where they revealed a painting on the wall of the United States and Central America with Palacaguina highlighted. Each World Race team that has been through Palacaguina put their initials on the state they were from and it was so special being able to add mine to the mural. After we signed the wall, Pastor David thanked us and we awkwardly smiled for pictures but before we knew it there was a line of the whole church preparing to hug us. Y’all… it was the sweetest and sweatiest thing ever. I wanted so badly to tell them that we should be forming a line to hug THEM!
Wednesday, September 18th
I cut my blog insert a little short on Friday after some news I received from back home. Friday was a rough day. My family and I were told news that someone in Chels and I’s family had died unexpectedly. This reopened a lot of wounds for the both of us. We had gone through a lot together but we never had to go through grief together. Let alone 1,169 miles (and a few countries) away from each other. It’s hard going through something so unfamiliar without the ones that have been there for you the most. It’s hard coming to terms with the fact that you can’t always be superwoman and fly home to comfort your “little” (almost 18 year old – *insert crying emoji*) sister.
As much as I would love to think that I am in any way comparable to superwoman, well I’m simply not. My “little” sister can do this without me being there to fall back on, her strength is something I will always admire. She’s never once needed me, she just likes for me to think she does.
I’m not going to go into too much detail for the sake of a peaceful passing but that person was loved by Chelsey and I dearly, even if we didn’t get to see them all the time. They know that and we know that. I believe God has much bigger plans for them by His side. As saddening as seeing someone go is, it’s so comforting knowing that your Earthly life isn’t the one God had intended to be “the end” because frankly, our main goal on this Earth is to make it back to Him living as Christ-like as our broken human hearts can. I’ve learned death is a hard and scary thing to deal with but God knew where I was going to be when it happened. And for that, I am so thankful for the amazing group of girls I’ve had here to comfort me in times I’m feeling a little extra sad.
Well, duty calls and today is my kitchen day so back to work I go! How wonderful is it that I get to spend two hours preparing a meal for my team who is out preaching a Bible lesson to a group of kids at a local church. Serving them by simply cutting vegetables for two hours has made me so appreciative of
- All of the hard work they have done today during construction and Bible study,
- The time I have had off in-between meals to write this,
- And how much hard work our sweet hosts put into making 11 very capable females dinner when at home I would probably be so excited over making myself a bowl of cereal (don’t get me wrong my parents are amazing cooks, yes mom you too, but sometimes ya girl needs a bowl of cereal for dinner and that is A-Okay)
Thursday, September 19th
I know I know this blog post has taken me forever to write! Hang in there I promise I’m almost done. Just wanted to share something the Lord is doing through my team that I think is pretty cool. So, every (well, mostly every) night we have something called team time. It’s a little bit of a debrief from the day and someone usually shares their testimony.
[Side note: team time can look like a bunch of things but because we just all met each other and don’t know a lick about each other, we are trying to get through testimonies before the other stuff.]
Well, tonight we did team time a little earlier because of a volleyball game some of us wanted to be a part of. I guess the point of this story is to say that I have so much appreciation for and look up to so many of these Godly women and it is so amazing that they feel safe in this environment we have created when we came together as 11 strangers. I can’t really call them strangers anymore being that they’re the only faces I will constantly see for three months and for the fact that I already know we will be best friends for years to come. “You’ll be friends with your college friends forever” nope, sorry but try “you’ll be friends with the 10 girls God placed you with for three months in third world countries because you will be gross around them in countless situations and have no one else to talk to because your phone doesn’t work.” Yep, that sounds about right.
I am just so thankful that I have them to support me and be my backbone in times I feel it giving out. They’ve become my home away from home and it’s so much easier being homesick when you can only call one place home.
A little verse God has put on my heart this month: “Hear me, O God. Attend to my prayer. From the end of the Earth I will cry to you. When my heart is feeling overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Psalms 61
Last thing, I’m sorry (when typing that I totally just thought to myself “lo siento” lol this Spanish speaking is really getting to me) I know this is taking forever! We had about 20 minutes before people who were playing volleyball had to leave so our leader introduced something she did on her 11n11 route with her team. To end team time we all put in headphones and turned up our own worship music as high as we could without blowing our ear drums and sang (or didn’t – whichever you usually do) as loud as we could. Morgan, my leader, ended up turning off the lights during our first song and the Holy Spirit thought it would be so appropriate for me to just start uncontrollably bawling my eyes out in the dark with my whole team singing as loud as they could – which, can sound a little funny when you’re in between songs and you can hear everything. I think that verse is a perfect reminder to myself of my tendency to hold onto everything so tightly with no room to allow God to heal. I’ve caught myself feeling overwhelmed quite a bit on the trip; whether it’s feeling homesick, not talking to people back home often, or just simply having a long day and wanting so badly to fall into bed and sleep it off. But during worship, as soon as those lights went out, I was able to let go of it all and cry-sing to our Creator. What an awesome reminder to take a step back and give it all to Him. It’s crazy to me, that even on a 3 month mission trip focusing on Him, it’s still easy to forget to have your own 1on1 time with the One who gave it all.
I hope when I get back home, and even everyone reading this, that I (and you) don’t forget how important it is to spend that special time with our Heavenly Father.
Sincerely, Stef
