we were at the bus stop 15 minutes early in Leon. it was the last one that would head back out to the middle of nowhere, our home, Salinas Grande, for the day. we were wondering where the other three of us were and if they were gonna miss it. 5 minutes went by, then 10, then 15….and then the bus was coming, it came, and went….without stopping. as it drove by we saw our friends shocked faces in the windows telling us we obviously hadn’t been waiting at the right spot. oops.
Allie looked at me…and I said, “run!” and we all booked it…chasing a bus through the city for blocks and blocks, half way laughing and half way a little scared at what we were gonna do when we didn’t catch up. locals laughed, men ran next to us, laughing at us along the way as the girls on the bus were yelling at the driver to stop.
he finally stopped. we got on and laughed…a lot. and the people on the bus laughed at us…a lot.
I would give that experience a top 10 world race moment. i love when mundane things, like waiting for a bus, turn into adventures. but the joy, excitement, intensity and laughter of that situation is a description of my entire month. I cannot even begin to describe the love that my heart has developed for the town of Salinas Grande.
we were kinda on our own this month so we divided ourselves up into different teams and started planning our ministry in this town…one of the poorest of Nicaragua.
I didn’t have a preference of what I did…and I got put on the “beach team.” don’t let the name fool you…we were still a 15 minute walk from the beach and we had to walk about 45 minutes in 110 degree weather to get to our ministry. “walking team” or “sweaty team” woulda been a more appropriate names.
our average days started at 520…teaching preschool at 715, working at a feeding from 9-12 and then teaching English from 2-4.we may have been in tents. without running water, without showers or toilets and without a single comfort…but this has easily been my favorite place.
(just doin some laundry)
first of all because I love roughing it and living simply. and also because there’s nothing like walking down the dirt street and having people yell out your names to say hola, kids running up and hugging you or people driving by on bikes yelling out, “yellow shirt!” because that’s what you taught them in English class that day.
i also found the trick to getting people to listen to my broken Spanish this month…tell them you don’t know how to speak it and need practice. they’ll ask you all kinds of questions about EVERYTHING, not expect you to understand or know how to answer and when you do, they get really excited for you and compliment you on how good your Spanish is, even if it’s not. and the more I prayed about specific people I was “practicing” with, the more I got asked about favorite bible verses, stories and even my testimony.
(yep…you see right – missionary skirt and sneakers…gotta do what you gotta do when you’re walking two miles to ministry.)
the desire to learn in this town is something I love being apart of. whether I’m screaming English words in a room of 70 kids, teaching a game in a highschool class or learning a new kind of tag on a soccer field with eight year olds…I can’t compare the feeling of fullness in my heart to anything I’ve experienced before.
just like waiting for the bus in León….I feel like the entire race I’ve been waiting for the bus that God invited me on this year. where he was going to take me “home”, to where he really had for me to be. I’ve been waiting and waiting…and I think I gave up hope that this “bus” was coming. then, it came…and to keep up with this month I’ve had to break out into a sprint. I finally got on and it’s been a blast, a top ten month of my life. halfway full of laughter and joy and halfway full of the fear of what this might mean for the future.
now this coming week, we move ministries and go an hour up the road. mom will be here Wednesday…I can’t believe it’s been eight months since I’ve seen her….I’m excited. I’m sad to leave these crazies that I’ve met here…but I think I may end up back here at some point. and I am excited to see what the next two weeks looks like in different parts of this incredible country.
