August Highlights (Photo Blog)

     We were blessed with two wonderful
short-term teams during August, The Quest team from Ohio and the Living Water
team from Boone, NC. I loved having the opportunity to minister, worship &
pray, and just hang out with these teams. They brought so much life to the
mission and really poured out their lives for the children and youth here! They did incredible work here and we were so blessed to work with them. Plus
it was great having such amazing community here for a few weeks! I also got a lot of practice as a translator which is really pushing my Spanish skills to grow (unless of course I am translating for Andrew and then the only word I get to say is “tuani” over and over again). Oh, and an
added bonus… traveling around with the Living Water team helped me to discover
that hammocks in the back of trucks are my absolute favorite mode of
transportation!! (Unless of course the hammock breaks mid-trip which has
actually happened to me twice this month).

     The end of July and August we
celebrated so many birthdays! I really think at least half of our youth were
born in July and August. Of course all of these birthdays meant tons of
dancing, giant cake fights which always led to Rosita tackling me to the ground
and smearing cake EVERYWHERE, and taking kids out for pizza dinners to
celebrate. I love getting to make them feel extra special and loved on their
birthdays!!

    Also this month, Ashley
Willingham, returned for a short visit. It was such a gift to have her back
here with us for a little while. It made my heart happy to catch up with her
over morning coffee dates, to pray together for each other and for the mission,
and to minister alongside of her again. Ashley has such a sweet spirit and
loves the Lord and the youth here so deeply. I’m so thankful for her!!

     We were able to make a trip to the
neighboring village, Santa Matilda, for a huge outreach there. I loved getting
to spend time with the children and families in Santa Matilda. It’s amazing how
different each village feels even within the same country. There is so much work still to be done in Santa Matilda. It is spiritually one of the darkest villages in this area. The focus of our work in Candelaria is discipleship and teaching people to walk more intimately with the Lord. The focus of the church in Santa Matilda is definitely introducing people to Jesus. There are so few Christians who currently live in the village. There is also a lot more gang activity and violence in that village. I was excited that our youth were able to visit and minister there. They visited homes, prayed with people, and also
performed several of their dances and dramas during the outreach. They did an
amazing job sharing the Lord’s love in a way that really captured people’s
attention. I’m so proud of them!! It was an amazing afternoon. Please continue to pray for this village and for our church plant there.

     Our church has been reaching out
to one of the local gangs who are really hungry for the Lord. One of my
favorite moments of the entire month was having a church service in the yard of
one of the gang members. We worshipped together, our youth danced and shared
about the Lord’s work in their lives, and Tommy and the guys from Living Water
shared the truth of God’s grace and love for us. These guys have started
attending our church. Five of them (including the gang leader) gave their lives
to Christ this month! The church leaders are now beginning a discipleship
program for them. You can read the full story here

     Right before the Living Water team
left, I was able to take a trip with them to the beautiful mountains of Matagalpa. It was
such a fun, adventurous, and refreshing getaway! We were able to swim in
waterfalls at Cascada Blanca, spent an afternoon hiking through the rainforest in ridiculous amounts of mud and then venturing off the path to chase after the howler monkeys (we did find the monkeys eventually),
enjoyed the beauty of the Nicaraguan mountains, and spent time at Selva Negra
coffee plantation. I loved being able to adventure with them! It was so much fun and such an incredible time of fellowship together! I also need to get in a lot of rest and time alone on my days off because both of those things are hard to come by in Candelaria. So, I was able to sneak off one morning to visit my favorite coffee shop in
Nicaragua and spend a couple hours just
drinking delicious cappuccino, eating Nutella crepes, and spending some time
alone with the Lord. Good coffee shops are definitely something that I miss
being here so it was such a wonderful morning for me!

    We ended August supporting the
youth at a regional Christian Dance & Drama competition. Our church’s dance
ministry team has been practicing and preparing all month. They were entered in
drama, choreography, and traditional Nicaraguan folk dance. They danced and
performed beautifully. I was so proud of them!! They won 2^nd place
in both drama and choreography and won 1^st in folk dance. The best
part for me was seeing how unified they were during the entire competition and
to see how proud they were of themselves. I love the self-confidence that this
ministry is giving them!! To read more about this ministry and to see pictures and video from the competition, click here.

Bonus Photos (August Mishaps):

August has been an amazing month, but we have also had some crazy mishaps happen this past month.

    First my friend Rosita and I were in a motorcycle wreck in the middle of the month. Rosita was driving me around Candelaria on the motorcycle of one of the guys from our church. We were on our 2nd round through the village when the bike’s headlight got caught on a low-hanging, illegally-connected power line and was clotheslined. We went sliding across the dirt road. Fortunately we had really minimal injuries just a few scrapes and bruises. Rosita’s scrape was a little larger and deeper than mine, but we were both fine. My oddest injury is a hole in the middle of my right thumbnail from a rock puncturing a hole in the middle of my nail. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but I will still be waiting a few weeks for it to grow out. This is a picture of me right after the accident still covered and dirt and blood, but clearly not in too much pain considering that this picture is taken in the Eskimo ice cream shop.

     I also had my first experience with Nicaraguan hospitals. No, I wasn’t in the hospital, but Ellie (one of our short-termers this month) had to go to the hospital and have her appendix removed. Linda stayed with her for the surgery and her first night in the hospital. Then I took over the next day, spent the night and stayed with her until she was released. I will say that Nicaraguan hospitals are definitely not like hospitals in the States. We stayed in a recovery room with 6 other women. All of the beds were in use and there are no chairs so I slept on the tile floor all night (which was fairly dusty considering that it’s a hospital). Ellie couldn’t eat or drink anything so she was on IV fluids the whole time. However, IVs in Nica don’t have wheels so everytime she had to get up and walk or go the the bathroom I was following her with the IV bag on my head. This picture is Ellie in her hospital bed holding up her appendix in a Gerber baby food jar. Hilarious! No worries. Ellie is fine. She is out of the hospital and recovering really well.