This month we are staying in a little town in Nicaragua called palacaguina. Our whole squad is here tenting it up inside a church. We tend to draw a lot of attention to ourselves when walking down the street, I don't think they have ever seen so many white people in their city before. But their hospitality has been amazing. We are all partnering with local churches and helping them with whatever needs they have. This month has been so stretching and growing for me. God has been placing a lot of things in front of me that are outside of my comfort zone.
Things like doing manual labor, which is not my forte. I've never done much manual labor in my life, but after a few sore days, I've learned that I love it. We have been helping our host church build bible study classrooms and building a house for a single mom in the community. We have been shoveling a lot of sand, moving a lot rocks, leveling floors, and making cement for the walls. It is such a beautiful way to serve people and make a tangible difference in their lives.
Our host church has also asked us to lead worship for them on Sundays and Wednesday. Now if you know me at all, you know that the last thing I would ever want to do is stand on a stage with a microphone and sing. But I did. Yes it was with 12 other people and yes the congregation had no idea what we were singing because we only knew English worship songs, but it was still something wayyy outside my comfort zone. And we are now famous because of it. They broadcasted our performance at the church on the local palacaguina news, without telling us.
And the most fun thing The Lord asked me to do was go talk to a little old lady who lived next to a house we were starting to build for a member of the church. We had finished moving some supplies at the land where the house will be built, when I saw this little lady sticking her head out of the house, I'm sure wondering why a bunch of white people were next to her house. I felt like I was supposed to go to her, so I grabbed my teammate who is much better at Spanish than I am and we walked to her house. And I use the word house lightly, it is a one room shack with no electricity, water, toilet, or kitchen. But Martina, welcomed us into her "casasita" small house, with a smile. I immediately noticed the lack of food and her extended stomach as well as a man sleeping in of the three cots in the small room. After talking to her for awhile we discovered that she went to church we are helping at this month and that she recognized us from our performance on Sunday (told you we were famous). We also discovered that she has 3 sons, one who is mentally handicapped and one who was laying In the bed with a high fever that he had for days. She whispered to us that she had no money for food or to get the medicine her son needed to get better. We decided to bless with those things she desperately needed. But above the tangible things like food and medicine we were able to give her, we were able to pray for her and her sick son. And the next day when we went back to work on the house, her son was completely healed!
The Lord is good. He constantly shows me that he has so much for us on this race. So many people to meet and things to see. I'll never forget Martina. And I'll never forget that stepping outside of your comfort zone is worth it every time.
