I enjoy the race aspect
of traveling, but getting to ride together with all team B was such a blast! All
27 of us squished in to a van heading out from
Antigua,
with a huge pile of bags on top! Ya, we´re close! The back of the bus entertained ourselves with camp songs, and got everyone to participate in a few rounds of “Allelu…Praise ye the Lord” – getting some exercise standing up and down when it was our turn to sing! Our first night we stopped at a hostel in
San Salvador,
El Salvador to break up the trip.
We
switched over to a Tica bus (most common Central American transportation) at 5
am for the remaining 13 hours of our trip the following day…hit the tip of Hondoras, through the Nicaraguan capital of Managua and ending in
Jinotepe
.
We spent 2
full days here at Casa de Mateo, a hotel that
USA missionaries Glenn & Lynn
Schweitzer use as a ministry and source of income. Not too many years ago, the
hotel was occupied by the sandistas (the rebel group that raged war in
Nicaragua
trying to overthrow the gov´t for 10 yrs). They offer the hotel at a
very affordable price to house missionaries and groups coming in to
Nicaragua. What a blessing to have beds and warm showers!
The Schweitzers work in the barrios
and dump, pastor a church, and are in the process of building an orphanage.
The people are very hungry for hope and love!
Nicaragua is
the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere!
Team
Nessa will be staying here for the month, Aggapetos is heading to
Costa Rica, and
Zeo will be working in Ometepe. Zeo only had one day of outreach in Jinotepe, but it was an awesome one!
We started with a walk through the barrios (the upper lower class) who live in housed constructed of tin and pieces of wood. We were going to walk through and pray, just to get an idea of what the barrios look like, but we couldn´t just walk on by what we saw. We started spreading out to go in to houses to pray, to play with the beautiful children who are so hungry for love and hope!
These 2 girls grabbed my heart. Kenya and Allela. I had been talking with them in my broken Spanish, and the youngest one (Allela) had been hiding shyly behind her sister . I really wanted to connect with her and finally just held out my arms, not sure how she would respond. She immediately jumped right in to them and held on tight, just staring up at me. She never let go until I had to say goodbye when our group moved on.Wow! That was a powerful picture to me of how open most of these kids are to having someone love them and reach out to them! I wish I never had to let her go.
We reached the dump, right alongside the barrios…this is where the poorest of the poor live and work. Men and women scrounging through the mounds of trash, searching for treasures to sell so that they can provide food for their families! The sight and the smell of the burning garbage almost made me lose my stomach! We walked along the piles and prayed over the people and the whole area.
All of the towns in Central America seem to have a plaza, which has been an awesome tool for street evangelism! We were able to once again perform a drama and present the gospel. It was beautiful to watch the body of Christ spreading out all over the plaza, using our different gifts. One person after another the Holy Spirit would lay on my heart to go talk with. One particular lady the Lord laid on a few of our hearts, and it was so neat to see how God used a couple of us to speak to her. I saw her across the plaza and watched her face as she listened to the message- she was listening closely yet she seemed to be wrestling with something. I walked across the plaza praying, sat next to her and put my arm around her… tears were in her eyes. When the invitation to accept Christ was given, she nodded “yes” to wanting to go up front. Once up there, I felt the loss of Spanish to communicate with her and hear what was going on. God took care of that- He had already placed this lady on Jake´s heart (our most fluent Spanish speaker) who beelined over to her. Erin had also been given a message in her spirit to share with this lady. The lady´s husband had just been in a car accident and was now mentally impaired; she was hurting and scared and didn´t know how she would care for her husband and provide for her family. We were able to listen, pray with her and connect her with Glenn and his church.
Please be praying for Jinotepe- the harvest is ready! God has given multiple missionaries working here the vision that revival throughout Central America will come through Nicaragua! We believe it and are excited to be coming alongside them and joining in the movement of God throughout this country!
