Nicaragua 8/6/12

I wasn’t going to write a blog today, but I thought against it because my mother would kill me if I didn’t. :) It is currently 9 in the morning and we are at Cepad, a hostile type of place in Managua where we will be staying for the rest of the time. We spent yesterday in the town called Juigalpa working with a local church called Verbal. We taught the community about special needs children and visited some houses with children that have special needs. I visited a little girl named Catalina who has never had a diagnosis in her life. She has a wheelchair because her legs are very deformed. She cannot speak but it looked like she could understand some of what we said. Her parents abandoned her with her grandmother who watches over her and ten other kids. They were all so loving and it was amazing to see how much they loved on us, complete strangers. We all love the culture down here and all the children we meet are amazing at sports and laughter. Don’t be surprised if we don’t come back, because as of right now, I am going to move in with Catalina and her family. Wishing you all the best in Michigan. Please keep praying! Today we are going to visit a place called Tesoros de Dios (Treasures of God) to work with the special needs kids and do arts and crafts. Super excited!!! Love you and miss you! (ps: mom I forgot to email Coach Flynn, ☺) Never coming back to Michigan, Justine Hello everybody. It was quite an adventure to get here, but we finally made it. So far it has been super great. I am loving every minute of it. Yesterday was the best day yet, although we haven’t really been here for long. I made friends with a girl named Sharone. She spoke little English but she could understand it pretty well. She is 14. I hung out with her for much of the day, and we walked together to go to our home visit. Throughout the whole day we were trying out each others languages with each other. I was saying every word I knew in Spanish and she would smile big every time. She could have simple conversation with me. And we used her older sister as an interpreter some of the time. Her sister taught herself English and she spoke it very well. She was the same age as me. Sharone and I constantly were smiling at each other and when we finally had to leave her face dropped. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them and then pulled me into a hug multiple times. She told me in English that she was going to miss me a lot. It was very hard to leave her because we had just become friends. But she told me I was her best friend. (: Maddie Lily… There you go fam, my new friend :) But she is way too cool to just say her name. Lily was a seventeen-year old girl that I met yesterday at the church in Juigalpa. She spent most of the day translating for the pastor of the church, and she was also the translator for my team during the home visit. Throughout the day I had the absolute pleasure of getting to know this amazing girl with a beautiful heart. And actually, as a little side note, she was the sister of the girl Maddie shared about. Lily had a huge heart for serving in a variety of ways at her church, and her passion and love for God was shown in the way she served yesterday. Her love for God and for people was such an encouraging thing for me to witness, and it was so hard to leave her behind. God has a really cool way of teaching us through the people down here, and the people have a knack for touching your heart in a very special way :) Love you all!! Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Becca