The first two days upon my arrival in Nicaragua I cried at least ten minutes every hour, believe me there’s very little exaggeration here. I felt completely and absolutely a wreck, overwhelmingly broken. I could identify part of my distress from dealing with the consequences of poor management in recording my teams finances. Catching up pulled me away from most of my last week of ministry in the Philippines. Then during our travels there was a Wrinkle in Time, which was a joyous distraction from the burdens I had. The final day of traveling to Central America left me exhausted as I cried through our welcome dinner and praise service. I wanted to be able to celebrate with the host church that was so happy to have us, their first missionary group ever, but I just couldn’t. I understood the main reasons behind my tears, but I knew there was more to the break down I was having. My main encouragement is reflecting on how empty I felt going into Philippines and how after a week the Lord’s love for the Filipinos overflowed in me. I am also realizing more and more how blessed I am to have friends here and at home praying through this time with me. I’m looking forward to the healing that’s beginning even though the process is rarely fun.
A slight transition from my spiritual and mental status I want to share with you some of the other brokenness that has been occurring. In our time here one of our jokes has become, “Tamara, did you break it?” It started one day when I was doing manual labor in the back and I broke the rake I was using. Then two days later I break the hoe! I’m not sure if I should mention that we had toilet troubles the end of our first week…that actually didn’t get pointed at me. Again a few days latter I cracked the back of one of our chairs. Nothing had broken in a few days, but as I was pushing someone in the hammock, the string came loose and the laughs resumed. What makes this funny for us is that Mauricio, the maintenance man on the property, started the joking with his gestures and Spanish Spanglish.
Ohh…somewhere in this time I actually had an incidence where I very easily could have broken something but didn’t. PRAISE GOD! There is a huge beautiful tree that I’ve been just aching to climb since I first saw it…you guessed it. I fell from the tree trying to climb it, about a 5-6 foot drop. I walked away with a bruised ankle and some scratches on my calf as a couple of my teammates shared their view of the fall. It was fun even if I didn’t get into the branches for some time to relax. God did a great job when he made that tree. I guess some trees aren’t to be climbed or at least not yet!
