This month my team has found themselves living on the property of an orphanage that houses about 10 children from age 9-17 in La Quinta, Nicaragua. The orphanage is next to some slums in which we will be also working and ministering. Our days will be filled with coming alongside local church staff and participating in their VBS, evangelizing in the slums and inviting them to church and VBS, working on the orphanage property, teaching English, teaching wire crafts, helping out with chores and working on projects that afford us opportunities to build relationships with the kids in both this orphanage and this community.
I’m really excited about this month because I’ve had 2 months of “refresher Spanish” but have been in community with a lot of English speakers so I haven’t been forced to really practice it. This month I will have the chance to really dig in and speak more Spanish. Also, I have been asked to teach the kids in the neighboring slums a skill or handicraft that I learned last month in Honduras. I hope to be teaching them how to make little animals out of wire while practicing my Spanish and building friendships with them. Also, my first night here, two older boys, Daniel and Alex, found out I could play guitar and begged me to teach them to play it. I’m really looking forward to that because already, I feel their opinions and voice has a weight in this community. I believe these young Christian men will be able to take a truth message and positive, uplifting music into their neighborhood and church and radically set an example.
On a personal note, I want to recap a theme that the Lord was teaching me last month. The Lord walked me through and revealed to me so much about what I allow to define my value and worth. This month, the Lord has pressed me onward to a new theme: Surrender. Surrendering those things that I feel give me value, and surrendering control over my life. Walking in a life that is surrendered never, ever looks like you think it will. You can have absolutely no expectations. That is way easier to talk about than to live. That looks like surrendering communication with your family and friends when your computer is broken, your can’t find an international sim card and you have to walk to a bus stop, take a bus into town and find an internet cafe, it looks like not knowing if you are ever going to get this toilet to flush when you feel about of diarrhea coming, it looks like not knowing what your week, month, year, let alone the next minute looks like. It means being in constant conversation with the Lord and asking the Holy Spirit free you from feeling like you are a failure because you have to surrender one more thing that you can’t fix or you could fix but shouldn’t. Ugh, that last one is REALLY tough to surrender because it’s more of my choice to trust Jesus with EVERY thing in my life.
Still there is no place that I would rather be. Love my life.
