April ’13 Highlights (Photo Blog)

    This month's photo highlights will be short because I spent the first half of the month still in the States with my family. It has been quite a hectic, crazy, beautiful, exciting couple of weeks

    I made it back to Nicaragua just in time to celebrate this beautiful girl's quincenera. I was so thrilled to be studying alongside my lovely friend Junieth (pictured right with some of my favorite girls during the quincenera). Quincenera is a beautiful celebration as a teenage girl becomes a young woman. This is the fourth quincernera that I have celebrated since coming to Nicaragua. Each of them is so special, but I have such a unique relationship with Junieth. I have found a place within their family and Junieth always refers to me as her aunt. We have such a sweet relationship and I loved the chance to celebrate this beautiful day with such an amazing and lovely girl! I just love who she is becoming.
     
     Also this month we were able, together with Adventures in Mission and Educate Nica, to launch a fund in honor of Anthony's life on the anniversary of his death. (To read more, read my blog: Anthony Lives) This fund will help to provide scholarships for students who long to attend university, but are not sponsored through our sponsorship program. Anthony would be college-aged now and the Lord had begun to awaken dreams in his heart. We have some other beautiful dreamers in our church family and we are so excited to be able to empower them to dream while simultaneously honoring Anthony's life. If you would like to give to this fund, you can do so here: http://educatenica.org/pages/anthonylives

    I am so thankful that Cadence is back here in Nica full-time!! She actually arrived in Candelaria in March, but it was after I left for the States so this is the first month that I've gotten to spend with her. She was here with us in Nicaragua with her World Race team in April-May 2011 and then again June-August 2012. She is now here indefinitely working with New Song! I just love this girl and am so excited for her to join our New Song family!! Cadence is a huge answer to pray personally because she is going to help me with our ever-growing sponsorship program. She also has such a heart for discipleship and has been working to start a discipleship group for youth who are ready to be leaders and another discipleship group, alongside some of these youth, for 10-13 year old girls. She has also been working with Jovanny to help him further develop his English classes and to learn additional teaching methods. She's going to be such an incredible asset here at New Song. Plus, she and I just have so much fun together and I am really glad to have some more amazing community that will be here long-term.

    This month, while Haille is in the States, I am getting to teach the 2-4 year old Sunday school class. I get to spend every Sunday morning teaching 18 or so little preschool age loves (pictured below left). These kiddos are just precious! I will admit that I am a much better teacher for elementary age kids than I am for preschool kids. Two and three year olds have a very short attention span… yes, you can see a couple crawling away in this picture. But I have loved getting to spend this time with these absolutely precious little ones! I love getting to teach them about the Lord, hold them, pray over them, and play games with them. And now when I walk by the preschool as they are coming in or out of school I will always get some little ones who run over and throw their arms around my waist yelling, "Hola profe!" or "Hello teacher!"  I'm thankful for this opportunity to pour into them this month.

   This month we were so blessed to have Don V. and his team here with us. They came to install a solar pump for our water tank. However, after all of their water treatment systems and solar panels were confiscated by customs, they still came with such great attitiudes and set about doing anything and everything they could to help us. *Please be praying because we are still trying to get all of those donated items back from customs. If we don't get them in the next two weeks they become property of the government.* One of my favorite parts of the week was taking Don to meet his sponsored students (pictured right with his sponsored students). It was the most emotional sponsorship meeting that I have ever been a part of. He is sponsoring two girls that do not have dads in their lives and so they felt so connected with him as a father figure. And then, as though the meeting wasn't already tear-filled, I began to share with the three kids that Don was here researching CRI (Chronic Renal Insufficiency) the kidney disease that affects so amny in our community. He is looking for an exact cause so that we can begin to move toward a solution. As I started sharing a little of his heart for this area and the work that he is doing, Teresa just started sobbing. She lost her dad to renal failure four years ago. It meant so much to her and her family that he was here looking for a cause. I was also able to take him and his daughter out to meet the families of each of these students and to bring a water filteration system to each of their families (all three families have at least one person who is currently affected by CRI).
    Their team maintained such great attitudes even though the issue with customs kept them from being able to do the project that they came to complete. They spent the week looking for and creating projects that they could do to bless the community and mission. Thanks to their team we now have filtered water from our kitchen sink at the base and in the sink in the new long-term team house that we will be moving into next week. They also cleaned the water tank and took additional samples to ensure that we have clean water. We are so thankful for them!

   I have been spending some time with my two sweet hijas, Jessica and Juanita. I really wanted to spend more time with them this month because I know that things have been hard within the family. The girls went to visit their mom, things have been tense with their dad not providing any money for their care, and their aunt told me that the girls had been acting out at home. I was able to spend the entire afternoon with the girls playing and laughing (pictured left taking silly pictures with my computer) and watching princess movies. I also pulled each of the girls aside individually to have little momma chats with them about the things that have been going on at home. I really want to speak into their lives. To speak healing over their pain and to speak truth over them and teach them what it appropriate behavior. Their aunt told me that things have been improving with the girls' behavior since I talked with them. In this next month, I want to spend even more time intentionally discipling my beautiful girls!

    We had a biking adventure out to La Isla. I wanted to take Cadence out to the village and introduce her to the kids there since that is one of the two villages that she will be coordinating for the sponsorship program. Melissa, Tommy and Linda's daughter, was visiting New Song and asked to go with us. The first part of our adventure was running around Candelaria trying to find two bikes that we could borrow. At one of the houses while I was asking about a bike, small children kept coming and throwing more and more small kittens into my hands (pictured right), but at least we did get a bike to borrow! And then we found a 2nd bike from one of our pastors which didn't have any brakes, but Melissa said she would be fine with that. So then we set off in the hottest part of the day biking across bridges and past the sugar cane fields and out to visit our sweet kids in La Isla. We spent some time visiting with them and introducing them to Cadence so that they would know that she will be here working with me. I love visiting with these precious ones. They are so shy. It's so different from the craziness of working with the kids in Candelaria. And then we had some fun adventures biking home, especially Melissa without her brakes as she decides to go full speed flying down a hill and through the tiny creek with water spraying everywhere and all the people from the surrounding house cracking up. Such a fun afternoon!