The`kids and the staff at the orphanage threw us a fiesta the night before we left. It was so much fun and we were able to just hang out, dance, and be silly with each other. It was a good time to get to hang out with all of the kids one last time and build more relationships with them! The night started off with some of the kids painting our faces- some did a better job than others, but in the end we all looked silly and crazy and it was all worth it! Then the kids performed a couple of dances for us. The older girls during worship will do ribbon dances which are absolutely beautiful and a wonderful way to get into worship! So some of the girls performed a ribbon dance for us. Then they have a traditional dance and the girls got all dressed up in the traditional outfits and did the Ometepe dance. Then they taught us a dance that they all know and what a work out it was! They showed it to us first and it was so much fun to see the staff, like the handyman and the kitchen ladies, and the kids do the dance. Then they had us come up and do it with them and what fun it was! Then it was piñata time, but the trick of it was that after every swing or so you had to do some dance moves. One of the boys, Darryl, went first to show us how it is done and when he started busting out his Latin dance moves it cracked us all up! Some of us, like me, were able to hit the piñata Latin style before it broke J We had ice cream, with some unsual flavors, cookies, and coke before it was our turn to show them some of our dances! We did the Cha Cha slide and the electric slide and having a fun time to just be silly and be ourselves. I had my first experience of a Nicaraguan fiesta and hope to one day experience something like it again!
The next day we left and it was much harder to leave this month than last month. We got close to some of this kids and it was really hard to say goodbye. But even though we where there for only a month we got to love on these kids like Jesus does and got to be God’s hands and feet. I learned so much this past month and God showed up in amazing ways and Ometepe will always have a place in my heart!
