Hello all,
Week 2 on Ometepe island has been an incredible one as we have started to settle into life here. My body is sorta getting used to the heat, even though I can’t seem to stop sweating. I drink lots of water and am staying hydrated. The week started out by going to church and it was all kinds of different. The church is a building with holes in the walls for Windows, fans and plastic chairs. The songs are all memorized so no need to put words up, everything was in Spanish so I didn’t really need to worry about it. Most of the songs they sang I knew the English version so I could sing along. The sermon was in Spanish but fortunate for us they had one of the missionaries here at CICRIN translate for us so we were able to understand. All in all it was cool to see God working in this little church 3,000 miles from home.
This week also had Nicaragua’s Independence Day so that included going to two parades that had dancing, drumming and the kids from CICRIN marching. I got to witness how they celebrate and watched how much fun people were having on the streets.
This week for ministry we did multiple things that included: cleaning around CICRIN, prayer walking and doing an event for the local ladies. Doing the prayer walks this week has been a different experience as we listen to the Lord and pray for the area and the people. So now here is a little story about yesterday’s prayer walk. A group of 5 of us were told to head to Sacramento (yes that is a place here on the island). To pray along the way and for the people, so we head out with our directions and we are on this road in the middle of nowhere. We see a couple of people along the way. After about an hour we hit the main road on the island and we ask someone for directions and told us we still had a long ways to go. So we decide to just head back to LA (yes that is also a town on the island) to do some prayer walking there. And when we get there we hear someone calling out to one of the girls in the group and it is the pastors wife. She invited us to come in and we helped her make snacks for the event later that day. We stayed there for about 2 hours and decided to leave and it started to rain hardcore, like it does everyday. So when the rain lessened we started the 20 min trek back home. So that is one story of how we thought we had a plan and God changed it and used us to help in other ways.
The woman’s event that I was talking about, was where we set up different stations. The 5 stations were: washing their hands, cleaning their nails up, putting lotion on the hands and massaging the hands, painting the nails and giving them back massages. We prayed healing and protection over these woman as they went through. This was a way to give these women a break from everyday hardships and to let them know that someone cares about them. I might not have been able to communicate to them in Spanish but I could communicate with smiles and love. This opened my heart to see that sometimes all you need to do is something simple. So this week I want to challenge you to ask God how you can make a difference in someone’s life however big or small it is.
Blessings & Love
Christina
