Last Saturday, as we were driving from Honduras to Nicaragua on about a 10 hour bus ride, it hit me that this was the last time I would be traveling to a new country with no idea about what my living conditions would be like, what exactly we would be doing for ministry and what our host would be like. Not often in your life do you get to say you are moving somewhere for a month with so many unknowns. In a lot of ways, not knowing has become normal for me, so it’s a little sad that last Saturday was my last big day of surprises.
One of the biggest things people asked me about before I left for the World Race was ‘what would your living conditions be like’? And the truth was I had no idea. I had heard stories of people camping, sleeping on their popped air pads, living with an infestation of spiders, only having a squatty potty for the restroom and/or no showers for the month. So I had prepared myself for some months of roughing it. I did get a few tougher months, for instance in Malaysia, we went the whole month sleeping on the ground and had no water for showers for the first week. But other than that and a few more months with a shortage of water, our living conditions were rather nice. Obviously our standard of ‘nice’ may be different now, but altogether I got lucky for sure. I didn’t have a month of sleepless nights with no air conditioning or an infestation of cockroaches like some of my other squadmates.
This month completed 11 months of what we now believe to be nice living conditions. We are living in our Pastor’s church. There are two parts to the church, one is where the church service occurs, separated from the other part by blankets hung up on a rope. The other part of the church, behind the blankets, is where we are living. It’s just an open room that is packed with 6 beds for us. We have a western toilet and shower. The water does go off from 1-5pm every day, but we’ve learned to work around it and the water shortage is really no surprise to us any more.
As for ministry, we are doing a little bit of everything this month. Last week we visited a home for men in drug and alcohol rehab, we participated in singing lessons, we performed at two schools’ teacher appreciation ceremonies, we were a worship band at church, we visited with men and woman at a retirement home, we led a Bible study, and we competed in a volleyball match against the town’s volleyball team.
Every day, we eat all three of our meals with our host Pastor Luis and his family, Patricia (his wife) and their two kids Andrea (10) and Sergio (5). They provide and cook all of our meals for us. Surprisingly, the last time I had a host provide and cook meals for me was in Ethiopia, so it’s been a nice treat. I love having the opportunity to eat homemade traditional meals and it’s really nice to have the time for meals be a time that we spend with the family.
I almost wished I had waited to post my hospitality blog, because this family definitely deserves to be in it. My favorite so far has been finding out that they have “spies” all around where we are living, that have been assigned to keep an eye on us this month for our safety. They are just the sweetest. It’s going to be a good final month. We only have two more weeks of ministry, then a final debrief with our squad and leadership, and then I’ll be home. The time is still flying by way too fast.
Below are a few pictures from our first week of ministry:
Team One Hope on the Volleyball Court.
Pastor teaching us Spanish worship songs to perform throughout the month.
Attending some singing lessons.
The worship band at church…notice my lack of microphone and instrument. I have been labeled the team Band Manager. 🙂
