This month I celebrated my 29th birthday. I can't believe that I am already headed into my last year of my 20's! I 
absolutely love to celebrate my birthday and was so excited to celebrate with my Nica family here in Candelaria. A few of my youth started planning for my birthday a couple months in advance and were so excited to come up with surprises to make me feel loved and celebrated that day. I had such a perfect day! I was able to celebrate in the afternoon with my students from my English class in Nuevo Amanecer. I went to class planning to teach, but Jovanny (my co-teacher) hijacked the class and turned it into a birthday party complete with cake, my students praying over me, and of course getting eggs cracked on my head (pictured above left with Jovanny cracking eggs on my 
head!) After my class, Jovanny took me to the park for the evening to keep me out of Candelaria while the youth prepared for my party. We had a great time just hanging out in the park and eating ice cream. We arrived back to Candelaria that night in time for a party with all of my youth and some of my neighbors. It was such a fun time dancing, hanging out, and I even had a pinata (pictured right breaking my pinata). I felt so loved!! I'm so thankful for my Nica family here in Candelaria. It was such a perfect way to kick off this last year of my 20's!
I was able to spend an entire day with my girls, Jessica and Juanita. I just love this precious little ones! To 
read more about these girls and my relationship with them, read: Lives Intertwined by the Holy Spirit, Shattered Lives & Redeeming Love, and The Beauty of Today. I have been so excited to build more of a relationship with these two girls. This month, I wanted to do something special to celebrate Juanita's birthday. I bought a small gift and came and picked the two girls up at their aunt's house. We walked to the park in town and spent a couple of hours just playing in the park (Jessica and Juanita picture above left). The girls loved the swings and playing hopscotch most of all. Then they asked if they could come to my house and color so we went back to the house, ate lunch and birthday cake, colored, and then curled up on the living room floor and watched Finding Nemo. It was such a wonderful afternoon! I just love to see this sweet girls laughing and enjoying their childhood! Keep praying for them and for what the Lord has in store for my relationship with them.
This month we were blessed to have the drama and dance group, Generacion de Luz, here with us to do a 
3-day outreach in Candelaria and Chichigalpa (pictured right performing at Virgen de Candelaria highschool). They are a dance and drama group from Managua that travels around the country performing in schools and parks and using drama and dance as a means to share the gospel.
They love to work together with other ministries and even trained some of our youth to perform dramas with them. They are an incredible group of young people who are really passionate about the Lord! I really enjoyed our days working together with them.
During their three days here in Candelaria they held performances at three primary schools, a secondary 
school, and then finished off the week with a big performance in the park in Chichigalpa (pictured left).
They were so well-received at the schools. Both the children and teachers really enjoyed the performances and have given us an open door to return anytime we like. There was also a great turnout in the park on Friday night. People were crowded all around the stage intently watching the dramas and dances. The youth shared with great vulnerability the ways that the Lord has changed their lives. I was really impressed with this group of young people and hope that we will be able to work together again.
I'm so excited to announce that we have launched our student sponsorship website through Educate Nica. 
Josh and Sarah Davis were visiting with us in Nicaragua last year and wanted to help us and other ministries in Nicaragua educate children in impoverished villages. They came to Candelaria to photograph our children and interview our staff. They have developed a non-profit called Educate Nica. Their new website now hosts photos and biographies of our sponsored children. This is going to be a wonderful asset for our ministry in helping to promote our student sponsorship program. The site currently features 100 of our students here in Candelaria. Josh and Sarah will be returning to Candelaria in early 2014 in order to expand the website to include all of our children from each village. Just this month, we have seen 16 new students sponsored through this website. Check out our new sponsorship website: www.educatenica.org and consider sponsoring one of our beautiful children for only $25/month.
This month I went to visit out sponsored kids in Santa Matilde and La Isla. I love getting out to the outreach 
villages and getting to spend time with our kids there (a few of my Santa Matilde kids- pictured left).
It was amazing to see how the Sunday school program is growing in La Isla! There are more and more chiildren coming to be a part of the church there. I love to see how they love one another and reach out in generosity. To read more, read: More Than a Chance to Study… (La Isla). I love the see the kids already becoming a true community of compassion and love. I also loved visiting the families in Santa Matilde again and just seeing how much of a difference this program has made in their lives and families. To read more student sponsorship success stories, read: More Than a Chance to Study… (Santa Matilde).
One day I got to sneak away to Leon with my girl, Rosita. She had been going through some difficult things this month and wanted to get away and spend some time alone with the Lord. We spent the entire day together 
in Leon hanging out in the park reading scripture and worshipping (Rosita and I pictured right at the park). We also were able to spend time with a girl whose daughter had recently passed away. I loved to see how Rosita came alongside of her, prayed over her, and offered her words of love and comfort. It was also a great time for Rosita to step outside of her own struggles and ask the Lord to pour into her for the sake of someone else. Her own heart was being filled as she poured out His love to other people. It was a beautiful afternoon!
The middle of this month the Lord blessed us with a new staff member here at New Song. We are proud to 
welcome Haille Krieg to our New Song family (Haille and I pictured left)! She will be with us for at least the next year. Haille has a huge heart for worship and discipleship. She is going to be a great asset to New Song helping develop worship leaders at our church. She also longs to pour into the lives of the teenage girls and help them to grow in their faith.
I have just enjoyed having Haille here so much already! She is so much fun to be around, she is unique and loving, annointed in worship, and has such a heart for intercession and discipleship. I love to hear her singing throughout the house, visiting in the community with her, laugh and talk about life, or dive into intercession for our community. I'm so thankful to have another girl living here in the house with me and thankful that the Lord has called Haille to be a part of our family for at least the next year!
We were blessed to have a team from New City Church in Atlanta, GA with us for a week this month (team pictured below right). They are just an incredible group of young people! I was impressed by their willingness to dive deeply into 
relationships making the most of any free time that they had to play with the children in our community. This team worked with our Sunday school program in Candelaria making balloon animals for all of the kids. They worked around the property, did some propaganda work for the clinic, performed dramas at the church and in the schools, taught youth, ministered to people in prayer, and ran a soccer tournament. They were a wonderful group and we loved getting to spend the week working alongside them! And I love to see how the Lord used their time in Nicaragua to ignite a fire within this group. Pray for them as they return to the States to ignite other youth in their church and their schools.
We were able to have an incredible Thanksgiving celebration here in Nica (thanks to the cooking talents of 
Timoteo Rivers!). We made a Thanksgiving feast, even as our kitchen is a construction zone. Our menu included rosemary crusted olive and garlic stuffed pork tenderloin, maple caramelized roasted butternut squash, cheesy garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, lemon frosted funfetti cookies and pumpkin pie. Everything was so delicious and really felt like Thanksgiving dinner in the States. We had such a great day just hanging out with our little family, cooking and hanging out together all day. I love my New Song family!!!
This month I have taken over the 2-5 year old Sunday school class. I adore my little Sunday school loves!! 
This class has about twenty little kiddos (pictured right teaching my Sunday school kids). Sometimes it's hard to keep the attention of 20 children under five, but I really enjoy working with them. They have loved our new children's Bibles, The Jesus Storybook Bible. We spend a lot of our time chanting over and over again our theme for each story and I love to see that they are learning more about Jesus and His love for them. I feel so thankful to be able to teach these beautiful children!
You all know how much Jasmina means to me and how much I have been praying and longing for 
transformation in her life (To read more about Jasmina, read: Conversations of the Heart, Protecting Innocence Part 2, When Life is Hard There is Hope Part 4, My Journey: Seeking Serenity) One day last month, my lovely friend Jasmina came by my house and asked me if I could get her a Bible because she wanted to start reading scripture at home.
One day when I was spending my afternoon visiting Jasmina, I asked her if she would be interested in reading the Bible together with me. She was really excited about the opportunity. So, this month we have started meeting together to read and discuss the Bible. We have started in the gospels and have been reading through the book of John. I love sitting in her front yard, reading Scripture, and just chatting about what it the passage means and what it looks like to walk with the Lord. We have been able to have some really good conversations through our afternoon Bible studies. Please continue to pray for Jasmina that she will come to a real understanding of the Lord's love for her and the offer of salvation that we have through Jesus.
I absolutely LOVE just getting out in the village and spending my afternoons visiting with my precious 
neighbors. This month I was able to get out to visit so many people. I sat in people's homes and yards cradling beautiful babies in my arms, playing with children, catching up with sponsored kids and their families, visiting the sick, and just spending time with families that are so dear to my heart (picture right visiting with Jayson's family). I love that ministry here is so relational and how much people are so willing to open their homes at a moment's notice. I love spending the entire day just hopping from home to home spending all day with these beautiful people!
At the end of this month, I learned to machete cut my grass. I figured that if I'm going to be a landowner in 
Nicaragua then I also need to know how to care for my property like a Nicaraguan. Rosita, Gema, Haille and I spent one afternoon with Rosita and Gema teaching Haille and I proper machete cuting techniques (Rosita teaching me pictured left). We had a great time together and I love learning to do things on the land, but this is HARD work! I was so sore that I could barely move the following day. Check out our video here: Machete video. I am so thankful for the friendship of these incredible women who are helping me care for my land and dreaming with me for the future Abide foster home.
Abide Update: Things continue to move forward in my long-term dreams. Here are a few updates of where we are with that process…
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We are still working to get Abide set up as a non-profit in the States. All of the paperwork has been approved at the state level and is currently with the IRS awaiting approval. Once that has been approved we will be able to open a bank account and begin receiving donations toward the
Abide foster home. - We are also currently developing Abide's website. We are in need of a logo and are doing a logo creation contest. Check out the information here: Logo Contest Rules. Once that is set up, the website will be launched and we will begin fundraising for the foster home. I promise fundraising information will be coming SOON.
- I have now officially signed all of my land paperwork and am a legitimate land owner here in Chichigalpa. Yay! Praise Jesus!! That is a huge answer to prayer. Because I have that paperwork, I am able to begin building. I need to begin to build a wall around the outside of my land. It's fenced in at the moment, but after six months of hard rain, the fence posts are beginning to rot. Rather than replacing them with another temporary fence, I want to build my permanent wall. Thankfully, I have extra money from buying the land and will be able to use that for the wall construction. I have already talked to a local contractor and we will begin construction of the outer wall mid-January 2013.
- I'm still working on my Nicaraguan residency. I traveled to Managua this month to meet with the folks at immigration. Because I am here working with New Song, I need a letter from the mission as well as copies of their power of attorney in addition to my personal paperwork. I will be collecting all of the necessary mission paperwork and hopefully filing for residency as soon as I return from the States in January.
*I am leaving to go to the States and visit my family for Christmas December 6-27th. Expect more updates once I return.
