Week 8- Nicaragua!

We had an extra adventure day this week which was so fun! We went to the lagoon which had the cleanest water and 20ft decks to jump off haha. I attempted to do a backflip off the low dock no less than 20 times, and it did not go well unfortunately… still can’t backflip. We got served great food and it was a lot of fun to hangout with the squad and the staff.

Ministry this week was prayer walks and hospital and also we got to do “dump” and micro church for the first time! Dump ministry is when we go to the dump where people are shuffling through the trash to hopefully make $2/day, we go there to interact with them, share messages, and serve a meal.

Microchurch varies for each team, but our team got the unique opportunity to be with all of the local kids!! Our group consisted of a lot of the kids we knew already and some more around the community. We did a Bible study with the somewhat older girls group (about 10-14yr olds) and played with the younger kids. I am excited for this because none of the daily ministry we do is with kids, so it’s so fun that we get this opportunity once a week to be with them! For the other groups, they go with one of our guides who has his own microchurch and they will preach a message or two and get to know the group of adults. And for our time in Nicaragua, we get to stay with the same microchurch every week to really be able to build connections!

This week we did ministry on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday through Saturday we fasted and stayed on the farm. For a lot of my squad this was their first time fasting, it was only my second, and for the majority of us it was the longest one we had done. During our three day fast, we did not eat food and the point of this is to grow closer to God. Rather than eating and thinking about food, the goal is to spend time in the Word with God and be reminded that He will sustain you! My experience was good, I didn’t really have any revelations but it was important for me to spend time alone with God, and also my stomach didn’t feel hungry at all. I was definitely surprised by that, but then we would start talking about food and all of a sudden everything sounded good, I have been craving Canes for so long guys… During the fast, I read my Bible (Isaiah 58 talks about fasting!), listened to music, journaled, called friends and family at home, watched the movie “Sheep Among Wolves” (it’s about missionaries in the Middle East), restarted Outer Banks with some people haha, and played cards.

We broke our fast on Sabbath (Saturday) at dinner, our meal was chicken, vegetables, rice and plantain chips (YUM), and worshipped beforehand to finish out. Our hospitality team also put together a dessert to celebrate the end of the fast and 2 months on the race (8 weeks)!!! We had limited options haha so we melted marshmallow down and then dipped Oreos in it, which ended up being so good actually. Then to end the day, some of us watched a movie and some of us watched college football, and most people talked about how they ate way too much at dinner hahaha. We also have two church services every Saturday, both optional. One of them is squad church which we run, and the other is Spanish church which the ministry runs for the locals. I like going to Spanish church because we get to see a bunch of the people we see on prayer walks. We also get to see the people we invited to church in the last week, and hangout with the kids. This week, I met five new kids and at one point, them and these two other kids I know were pinning me down to pop a pimple on my face HAHA. It was not a real experience, I don’t even know. But it started bleeding and they all go “sangre sangre!” And I’m sitting there saying “Como se dice ‘AHHHHH’” hahhaha.

For our normal adventure day (Sundays), we just had a day of going in town and everyone did their own thing. My group restaurant hopped (post fast meant everyone wanted food haha), thrifted, sat at a cafe, and talked to people along the way. One lady we talked to was sitting in her chair on the side of the street and we stopped to talk with her and she invited us into her beautiful home and gave us a tour! We also talked to a man on the side of the road for about an hour and a half, and he was basically telling us the Gospel haha, it was cool to be ministered to like that. We bought him a calzone, prayed, and talked with him, He told us about Lazarus, how big God is, how God is in our hearts, the resurrection, and how where 2 or 3 are gathered the Spirit is present. And that’s everything I got considering we didn’t have a translator and my Spanish is very limited hahaha.