This month is an all squad month which has been nice to get to know the whole squad better. We are staying at Reap Granada’s ministry sight. The best way to explain it is that it is like a community center. Their mission is to be loved by God and to share his love with others. (Sometimes Christians focus so much on the loving others and forget about letting God love them.) They support the local community in various ways as needs come up and as resources allow. Some of these opportunities are: providing work for locals on their farm, cooking food, cleaning clothes and the dorms and other things like that. They also open it up to the public for bible studies, church, weekly soccer tournaments and basketball games.
Our ministry looks different everyday sometimes it’s doing prayer walks and going house to house and praying for families which they really appreciate a lot and will often invite the group into their house to sit and chat. Sometimes we may go visit and bring refreshments to people working at the dump the nursery homes and other local businesses. This past week my team stayed on campus and painted lines on the basketball court to get it ready for Friday night basketball games where a tons of locals will come to a bible study and dinner before the games begin.
The coolest part to me about this month is that even if we are staying on our campus site, we can still do ministry because there are so many Nicaraguans that work on the campus or just hang out here who we can show Jesus to. I have developed relationships with several of the locals here and the best part is they keep coming back so I can grow my relationships with them.
There are two girls in particular that I have spent a lot of time with, Gabriella and Michelle. They are both 12 years old. Gabriella comes here with her uncle and her little cousin Issac. Issac can’t say Gabriella and calls her yaya so that is her family’s nick name for her. She wants to be a teacher, she has a beautiful smile and is very very sweet. If she sees me working on something on the site she will come help me so we can hang together.
Gabriella
Michelle comes here with her 4 sisters and little brother. She does a great job watching out for them and walking them here and back home. She and I will sometimes go on walks around the farm and talk about life. (Yes in my broken Spanish. I am working on being more confident in what I know already and it has gone a long way when I talk one on one with someone) Michelle also will come hang with me when my team is working on a project and help me. These two girls along with so many other locals have made this an incredible month for me. I miss all of my girls back home so hanging with them has made my heart so so full. God knows my heart well.
Michelle and siblings.
I Also just wanted to Give an overview of Nicaragua as a whole from my perspective:
-They love baseball, basketball and soccer.
-Last March things changed economically, lots of business closed because of the political situations which caused more unemployment. More immigration to Costa Rica was a result of that. However, God has used that as a way to create more opportunities for the ministry to share the gospel and give them hope.
-They are so loving to each other and share what they have with one another.
-They enjoy life and are thankful for it.
-They have the ability to take something that some may see as useless and they will give it a useful purpose.
-The kids love playing with traka Trakas which is a toy that I still have yet to use correctly.
-They have trees here that they call “the tree of life” because they make maranga seeds that are very good for you and you can eat the branches too. Some people on my squad are researching how to make them into pills to use for medicine And then teach them how to do it.
-They have trees that grow little green fruit called mamones. I love them.
thank you all for following along and praying for Nicaragua, my squad and I.
