“Hola Tamara!” I think Latin America has been more ready to greet me than I have been able to genuinely greet it. We have been here three weeks now and I’m still struggling to get acclimated to the culture. I’ll share more of this with you in a different blog, right now I want to give you a better idea of what my team and I are doing this month.
For the rest of our trip the small teams are breaking up and individuals are going more to ministries that they feel lead to. This month 7 of us ladies remained in Granada, Nicaragua while the rest of the squad went to Puerto Cabezas. Christy, Brady, and I are three from team Lego that stayed, while Courtney, Elizabeth, Heather, and Silas traveled 32 hours North by bus. Please check out some of their blogs by clicking on their names. Also check out the other four ladies blogs that are here with me: Gabe, Jenny Brown, Katey, and Gina.
The main contacts we are working with here are on staff with AIM (Adventures in Missions, our parent organization) and are in the beginning process of establishing a missionary base for future teams. The property was purchased just a month ago, we are staying in our tents living in the barn that will soon undergo huge renovations. The location is ideal because it is located just between where the city ends and the barrios (~slums~) begin. There is a stark difference between those that have and those that don’t, especially in a tourist town like Granada. (Photo of the Ladies: Gabe, Brown, Gina, Tamara, Katey, Brady, Christy)
We are also working with a local church who has been praying and fasting for a team to come. It is such a humbling feeling to be an answer to a church’s prayers, just by showing up! Some of their youth went to Puerto Cabezas while others stayed here to help serve with us. We do a lot of our ministry outreach to the barrios in partnership with this church. One of our days goes as following:
7:00am manual labor in the back yard
8:30am breakfast
9:00am continue working in the back
10:30am start clean up from working outside
1:00pm lunch
2:30pm leave for door to door Evangelism in barrios
5:30pm return and unwind from barrios
7:00pm dinner
8:30pm bed-yes, I end up going to bed this early
Some days instead of working in the morning others leave to help with a feeding program from 9am to noonish. Once during the week and every Saturday we are part of and help organize a type of street service. In the times that are free we are either planning messages, recording finances, cutting media footage, practicing music, and/or rehearsing dramas.
(1) Christy and my tent (2) Pamela, the daughter of one of the ladies that cooks for us, “helping” me with finances
