Central America, I will miss you.
I will miss your trees and mountains and beaches, and the beautiful weather that goes along with them.
I will miss your language that I claimed to hate for the past 8 years and now I absolutely love.
I will miss your food. Yes, I will ACTUALLY miss your beans and rice and plantains at every meal.
But most of all, I will miss your people. Your incredible, kind, hospitable, loving, beautiful people. People who made me laugh. People who taught me to listen. People I fell so in love with that, when time came to say goodbye, my tears wouldn’t stop flowing.
I miss you, Panama. I miss your van rides, consuming more popcorn than I have in my entire life, weekly mac & cheese dates, my new friends from countries all over the world, movie nights, trips to Boquete, singing “O Lei Lei” everyday at ministry, YWAM, and the sweet Hogar students that stole my heart.
I miss you, Costa Rica. I miss the super cool “clubhouse” we got to live in as a whole squad, painting colorful murals every day, morning devos and workouts, having constant access to açaí bowls, Oceano’s air conditioning and chai frappes (and WiFi!!), the friends I made at Room2Board Hostel, and feeling right at home on the beach and at Horizon Church (with my fellow Tiger fans), especially Thursday nights at youth group.
I miss you, Nicaragua. I miss the 70 acre farm my squad lived on at REAP Granada, the lack of WiFi which turned into a lot of podcast listening, daily trips in truck beds, making jewelry out of tamarind seeds to help start a business, the wild and restful adventure days, waking up at 5 am for group prayer, and learning to cook with the incredible ladies in the kitchen and getting to love on their sweet kiddos.
I miss you, Honduras. I miss the small room all of Kintsugi lived in, the feeding programs where we were able to see the impact of people “adopting” a kid in another country, the kids that greeted us with huge smiles and hugs everyday at ministry, the family we not only lived with but became part of, the church on the hill where we watched the sunset and had a picnic with lots of kiddos, and the women in the community that taught us how to make food like empanadas, tamales, tortillas and coffee.
Thank you Central America. Thank you for the way you loved me and for everything you taught me. Thank you for four months that we’re each so incredible that I can’t pick a favorite.
And thank you to the team I got to spend the first leg of this journey with. Kintsugi, I will never forget you. Thank you for your wisdom and love and laughter and tears. Thank you for all the movie nights and for loving Harry Potter as much as I do. Thank you, Kintsugi, for forever friends.
We’re in Malawi now!!!! We’ll be in Africa for the next three months, and with this continent change also came a team change! Check out my new team over on the left or on the drop down menu.
and as Shakira would say,
THIS TIME FOR AFRICA
-jb
