On Monday, our team and our partner team for the month (Team Mates) headed to Palacaguina for ministry. Our ministry contact Jaime came to Managua to guide us back to the site. We took a van to the bus terminal in Managua and a bus from Managua to Palacaguina. Upon arriving there, we had to decide whether to walk about ’20 minutes’ to the church (our home for the month) or to take taxis. We all agreed we could handle the walk with our packs. 20 minutes seemed doable to us. And so the trek began.
We adjusted our packs as tightly as possible on our hips and carried our lives with us down the road. All of my belongings besides my guitar probably weigh about 75 lbs, and I’d like to make that lighter after this trip. It wasn’t too bad at first, but 15 minutes turned into 30, which turned into 40… and when I saw this big hill before the church, I felt like stopping. But I couldn’t give up momentum, so I trudged up, and alas, the church was in view. We were tired but thankful for arriving safely, and I was certainly grateful that most of it hadn’t been uphill. Then the men of our team wired electricity that night, so we had working power long before I’d expected. We even have new toilets and showers! The church has tile floors, too, on which we’ve pitched our tents to keep out the little critters. Such blessings!!
On Tuesday morning, we went straight to work. Our team stayed at the church to work on leveling out the ground for a parking lot, and the other team went to the clinic to dig and move dirt there. We used metal bars and pick axes to break up the hard, clay-like dirt, and then shoveled and wheelbarrowed it down the road. My tool of choice was the metal bar (‘la barra’) which is heavier than it looks and gives you blisters if you don’t wear tape or gloves (or…even if you do). I’m thankful for bandanas and medical tape, and even more for the work gloves that Jaime brought us later. It was hard but fun and rewarding to see visible progress. It was also a nice change of pace and activity from last month’s ministry. The next day was similar- more breaking, shoveling, and moving dirt. A few of us went up the mountain and worked on chopping down trees and moving wood for a barbed wire fence, which was even more intense work. I was not involved in that process- and I can’t imagine carrying trees all day- but serious props to those troopers. On Thursday both teams went to the clinic to clean up foliage, remove weed from the yard, and pick up/move inorganic trash (including test tubes, pH paper, broken needles, used gauze).
That evening, we went a few blocks down to participate in an outdoor church/mini crusade event. There were huge speakers, a keyboard, a mic, and rows of benches. The night was full of worship, Scripture, preaching by Jaime, and some special songs by whomever wanted to share up front. Jaime had asked us to prepare a couple of songs in English, so the people welcomed us and called us up to sing. At the end of the night, Jaime made a call to faith. One man accepted Christ, while several others came up to humbly ask for prayer. It was so beautiful and powerful, yet so simple. Just a bunch of villagers gathered in the middle of a street in Palacaguina, singing and preaching and sharing the truth that lies in Christ. This is what the Church looks like!
