I cannot believe that month 2 is already over! It seems just like yesterday that we arrived at our ministry site in Ometepe, Nicaragua! God did some amazing things this past month and gave us some incredible opportunities with the children and community.
This past month we worked at Cicrin Ministries at the orphanage. This orphanage is surrounded with God’s peace and love and is run by an amazing woman of God! These children know who God is and are active in their church and community- they attend Bible studies throughout the week and do ribbon dancing during worship at church to name a few things. The first week we were there, 6 of us stayed at the orphanage during the day to work in the garden, the kitchen, and help watch the 18 month old and 4 year old. The other 6 of us worked with the church doing random service projects. The days I helped with the church, we helped build a pig house and helped cleaned up the city park by cutting the grass and weeds with machetes and picking up trash. The other two weeks we stayed at the orphanage and worked around there with half of us working in the morning and the other half working in the afternoon.
It was hard at first to start to build relationships with the kids because they were in school the first two weeks we were there and had a lot of things going on in the evening. But for me, the relationships starting forming with some of the kids right away, like the younger ones, but it was only a couple days before we left that I started to connect with some of the older kids, like Christian. One morning I was on baby duty and a couple of the older girls were around and just hung out with me and we tried to talk with what little Spanish I know and what English they knew. Then when we went to watch TV they followed me in and I was able to hang out with most of them all day long J With Christian, she helped me with the two little girls and was such a blessing! We bonded over watching Dora the Explorer and Curious George and then later that evening we colored in a Christmas coloring book. God taught me this month that it is just the little things that make a difference and taking time out of your life and looking for the ways that He is working around me.
This month was a hard month, but in a way of what God was working on in all of us. It was amazing to see just how He knows exactly what we need and where we need to be at! This month we all dealt with individual problems and breaking down walls we had put up and surrendering more to God and this was the perfect place to do this! We had a “rancho” aka patio area, that looked over the lake and had hammocks hanging on it- it was our quiet refuge and the place where we all heard God speak!
The day before we left, a group came to do a clown presentation with the kids and the man gave a message about God’s love. It was so moving for us and just about made us all cry! He emphasized that they are not accidents and God has always and will always love them. Towards the end he spoke directly to us and just poured some life into us. He said that even if it looks like we are not making a difference that whenever we put a smile on one of these kids’ faces, that we are putting a smile on God’s J He also asked that if anyone has not felt or seen or experienced God’s love to come up and be prayed for and it broke our hearts to see some of the kids come up. I cannot imagine what it would be like to never experience a parent’s love or to even know that you are loved. So please keep on praying for these kids and that God’s love would just pour all over them and that they would truly believe that they are loved- especially loved by God!
Ometepe has a little bit of my heart with all that God did in my life this past month and the barriers and walls He broke down. It also holds a piece of my heart that some of these kids have! These kids are truly amazing and God has so much in store for them and for Cicrin.
