April Highlights (Photo Blog)

  This month we have seen some new things starting in the midst of the mission. We have been working for nearly a year towards the goal of starting a bakery and restaurant here at New Song. In April we were finally able to start doing some trial runs. Magdelena and her team in the bakery began baking breads and sweet breads to try selling in the community and to the church family. We are still working through a lot of the details and tweeking things that need to be fixed before we can start running as a full-fledged business. Please be in prayer for this newest business of New Song that it will run well, serve the community, provide jobs for needy families, and honor the Lord.

   Our clinic has been doing so well this month. Our client base is growing steadily and the clinic is becoming completely self-sustaining (praise the Lord!). The clinic has been able to provide medical and dental care to many of our Adopt-a-Student sponsored children in this last month. They have also been working on some amazing new work doing dental reparations. Ogla (our project’s administrator) asked me to help make a gallery displaying the work they offer. We are creating before and after shots of some of their dental work (like those pictured below).

   Our outreach village of Santa Matilde has had some new projects started in their midst. In March they were building a chicken coop on the property to start a small business of caring for chickens and later selling their eggs and selling chickens for meat. I visited the property again in April to find the chicken coop FULL of baby chicks! The project is really taking off. It will be amazing to see the ways that this new business can help provide for that community. Also, we spent a day in Santa Matilde with Pastor Walter visiting with families, playing with kids, and helping a little to reinforce the wooden beams that hold up the church with cement. Of course in Nicaragua any cement work requires hand-mixing the cement by pumping water from the well and mixing it with a shovel (pictured above). I tried my hand at cement mixing and it is hard work (honestly I only did it for maybe 5 minutes… I can’t imagine working all day like that!)

  Our garden has been harvesting tomatoes since February and continue to harvest more. It has been an incredibly large harvest. Our garden workers have been faithfully working in the garden mornings and afternoons for the last couple of months caring for and harvesting the tomatoes. We have then been selling them through our food store. I love to see this business doing so well. (Photo of our garden taking from the top of the water tower).

    For the past several months, I have been working with our Sunday school teachers and training them. We have a wonderful Sunday school program here where over 150 children come every week for games, songs, learning Bible stories, and just to experience the love and acceptance of God. I am meeting with the Sunday school teachers (who are teenagers from our youth group) every Wednesday morning to teach Bible stories and help them to pull out a theme and focus verse to teach the children. I do not, however, come and participate in the actual Sunday teachings. Right now this ministry in Nicaraguan run and led and I love it that way! Our goal is really to empower the local people to run their own ministries. I love being able to pour into the youth teachers and then to see them really run this ministry.

   I am continuing to work with our Adopt-a-Student program organizing files, facilitating communication between the children and their sponsors, meeting with sponsored children, and seeking additional sponsors. I love the difference that this program makes in the lives of families and children and am thankful to be a part of it. Our number of sponsored children continues to grow each month, but we are still in need of about 90 sponsors. If you would like more information or are interested in sponsoring a child for $25/month, $70/month, or $100/month, please email us at [email protected].

   This month I have begun building relationships with some of the absolutely precious children that live on the same street as our church property. Two girls in particular have really attached themselves to me this month. Maekeyling and Julissa are adorable, loving little girls who can almost always be found running around the church property in dresses and their faces covered in dirt. I have been pouring out the Lord’s love on them all month. Every time they see me they coming running for hugs or to be picked up and carried around. Every time we leave the church property in the truck they will stand their yelling and waving “Adios Chicha!” (Chicha is Julissa’s attempt at saying Lisa). So precious!!

   I have been so impressed by the way the girls on the World Race team has come around and loved and discipled my teenage girls. It has been so beautiful to see! We were able to end the month of April with a “Date with Jesus” dinner for all the youth girls. We had about 20 youth, plus 9 of us Americans, who showed up all dressed up in our date night clothes to eat together and to celebrated who we are as God’s beloved daughters and as the bride of Christ. The team had cooked a wonderful meal and had prepared devotions for the girls talking about being the bride of Christ and what that means in their lives. I loved hearing the girls speak and read truth over themselves and one another and shouting our “I am a daughter of God!” I’m praying that these beautiful young women will really begin to grasp their worth and beauty.

   We have been so blessed to have an amazing World Race team with us in April (and even more blessed that the Lord is allowing them to stay with us for the month of May as well). They have been such a huge blessing to me as they have provided Kingdom-minded community, really come alongside our staff during such a difficult month, have loved our kids so well, and have just been so much fun to be with. One of the best parts has been all of our adventure days together. We have ziplined through the rainforest canopy, surfed Cerro Negro volcano, camped and swam at Cascada Blanca waterfall, enjoyed the beach of Poneloya, had more car troubles than I can count and just enjoyed each other’s company. (Pictures of our zipline and Cerro Negro pictured below)

   If you have been following my blogs at all, you know that April has been really difficult month for me personally. In the middle of the month my parents’ house burned down and Anthony drowned in the same week. It’s been a very trying time for me, but the Lord has really been blessing me immensely in the midst of all of the hurt.
   One way that He has really poured out His love to me has been through this World Race team. They have come alongside me, supported me, and loved me in ways that I can’t even describe. The Lord knew how much I really needed their support this month. Just to give you one example, the day I found out that my parents’ house had burned down, two of the girls snuck into my room while I was sleeping to decorate my door with notes of love and encouragement. I am so thankful for them!!!

   The biggest blessing of all is that it worked out for my best friend Steph to come and be here with me during the grieving process. My best friend lives in Cambodia and I haven’t seen her in nearly a year. It just so happened that she was already in the States visiting and doing some fundraising when all of this happened. So, she called me and told me that she was booking a flight to Nicaragua and was just going to come and help me walk through this grieving process. It has been SO good just to have her here (someone who understands me and my emotions without having to say a word) and to get to spend time with my best friend. I am so thankful to have a best friend like her (I know it’s rare that is). Love you Steph!