Hey World!! It’s been a hot minute since I posted a blog post and a lot has happened so here it goes!!
Training camp was long, hot, but so great! I felt like I got a new connection with God and during a prophetic prayer circle exercise I really felt God speaking through me. It was amazing to see him doing so much in me when I didn’t think that I was able to be used in such a way. There was other things that happened there as well like bonding with me whole squad, learning about different foods we would be eating, and getting to worship the Lord in a different way.
The first week of ministry in Nicaragua was hard for me. I left home thinking mid 70s to low 80s was hot and came to a place where it is 90°s all day everyday. Pair that with working construction outside for 4 hours, you get a little sweaty. I was missing home and missing my friends and I was dying of heat. But God provided the best gift I had had in a while that I truly felt was for me. It rained. And not just a little. It down poured for like 30 minutes and I got to sing and dance in the rain. It felt like God was saying He sees me and He wants me to know that He loves me. That rain gave me a new energy to go and do construction the rest of the week.
The second week I got to go to a school called Palacagüina Christian Academy which has kiddos from preschool up until 2nd grade. All of the children were so sweet and so loving!! They didn’t know very much English and I have been really trying to learn more Spanish (I am pretty conversational!) but they didn’t care. During recess we would play a game of red light, green light and it was so cute seeing more and more kids join. All the children have such a hunger to learn and make friends. It’s very sweet.
We have been going to Osman’s, our main host, church on Sundays and helping in the children’s ministry classes. Now if you know me well, you know I love kids. Especially little tiny ones. But the first Sunday I got paired with the high school aged kids. I really didn’t know how to connect to them especially with the language barrier. I struggled at first but it got easier and less scary because I realized that they were there to learn about God and so was I.
Now if you’ve made it this far… thank you for putting up with my story telling. But I have one more story to tell and this one is not for the faint of heart. It involves 11 sleepy girls in their pajamas, a bowl, a sock, a pocket knife, and a big scorpion. Yeah you read that alright. Here it goes.
We were all laying down with the lights off and I had just put my phone away to start drifting off to sleep when Aubrey yells, “Morgan! Come kill this bug!!” and we all look and see a big scorpion on her headboard and she is cowering in her big net as far away as possible (Sidenote: she’s on the top bunk and sprang her knee when we went cliff jumping the week before). We turn all the lights and and start freaking out a bit trying to figure out what to do. It was blocking her from climbing down the ladder and no one wanted to squish it in case we missed and it dropped. So we start googling what to do and our poor leader gets a sweatshirt, a sock, and my pocket knife and tries to go stab it because that’s what Wikihow says to do. She climbs up the back way on Aubrey’s bed with her still in it. We all are standing around watching and some of us are a little on edge with fear (I was one of them) and they both start screaming so everyone else starts screaming. Why did the scream fest start? It moved lol. Everyone helped to get them off of the bed because he moved to the wall. He started climbing down the wall and we all we’re losing it. Screaming, yelling, and videotaping. The great knight who comes in and rescues us all was none other than Halston. She goes and grabs a big green Tupperware bowl and is trying to get it to move from the corner of the wall and floor out to the floor a little to trap it under the bowl and take it outside to kill it. She finally gets it and we are all screaming and laughing and crying. We scoot him out into the hallway and put a big pot over the bowl and a 5 gallon water jug on top so that it can’t get out. We all go and get back in bed and tuck our bug nets in a little tighter with the plane to let the thing die of starvation and lack of oxygen. The next morning we tell our host, Janer, and she goes and stomps it like it’s no big deal. And calls it small. Home girl literally said it was tiny. I wanted to pee myself because my first thought was there are bigger ones! My next thought was in so glad we caught it all on video!
So that’s my trip so far. It’s been really fun and I’ve learned a lot, but it’s also been kind of hard in different ways and in good ways. I’m growing in ways that I definitely would not be able to do in the States and I am so happy to be growing as a daughter in Christ.
