Saturday Evening 8/4/2012

8/4 Nicaragua Trip I felt like I have been here for 2 weeks. Oh wait… its only been 2 days. It all started at 2AM on Friday. We took the bus to Chicago where we thought it would only be about an hour or so wait before we started to board the plane to Nicaragua. Then, our flight got delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Until eventually we had missed our flight to Nicaragua. Did I mention that by the time we had missed our flight it was only about 10:30? So what you may ask, was our solution on what to do while we were waiting? PLAY TRASH! Probably the most pointless card game in the entire world. Probably worse than go-fish. We even switched gates and were still playing… the first game. And the saddest thing is, we only finished one game before we boarded. And whom you may ask was the winner of our ONLY game of trash? Jacob Morgan. And I would say the kid has a gift at playing trash, but it even took him the whole day to finish the game. But carrying on, the people in charge of our flight were kind enough to pay for a hotel for the night and our breakfast in the morning. We woke up (still in the same clothes from the day before) and headed down to the airport! We arrived and luckily, we were able to board our flight to Nicaragua on time! Wahoo! We all arrived in Nicaragua and took a, what was supposed to be 2 hour bus trip to Juigalpa. But of course, that turned into a 4 hour deal of us waiting in the hot bus while a riot was breaking out a little bit ahead of us. I guess it wasn’t to bad because it gave us time to bond and sing worship songs with the guitar we took with us on the flight. And I wish I could say our bus trip was enjoyable but I think people were getting annoyed with Sarah and my songs that we made up. Which to me was pretty impressive, but I don’t think it was to anyone else! Hours of waiting and singing later, we arrived at our destination and were given time to talk with a pastor of a church down here. Hearing his story and what he was doing for the kids was truly amazing and touched my heart, and I’m sure a lot of other hearts! The 2 days we have been here have been very long to say the least, but I’m very excited to see what God has in store for us for the rest of the week! Love Meg ☺ We finally made it! It’s awesome to get this chance to connect with the team we are with because despite the meetings we had I feel like as a group we are much more connected now then when we were before we left. And I’m sure this would have happened eventually either way, however it feels good to be connected before we start to serve the people in Nicaragua. I’m so excited to be able to just go with whatever comes up and trust that God knows what he’s doing. Tomorrow we get to do our first home visits; we will be going out into the community and getting to know some of the local families. I’m crazy excited to get to meet some people from here and be able to see how they live everyday. Tonight we met the pastor of the church here in Juigulpa and heard his story and his mission and passion. It was amazing to hear the differences in his lifestyle and how the churches here work so differently from the ones there in the U.S. Please pray that our team is willing to flex with changes in plans (as we are learning to do) but also to give us energy and good rest because of the work ahead. Also I ask that you pray for the pastor and his wife here, Hennry and Jonaira. In specifics, he is having issues with his eyes and they have been praying for God to bless them with a child of their own. Thanks for supporting us! It’s been wonderful so far and I can’t wait for it to get even better ☺ Muchas gracias (much thanks), Kylie Well, we got stuck in traffic today for about three hours due to a riot that some people in a neighborhood setting were putting on. Now come on dad, you have been in Central America working with police that deal with a variety of issues and you didn’t prep me for a Nicaraguan riot? Well, I suppose that’s all right because shortly after the police you trained showed up the situation was taken care of, so I guess you trained them well ;) Love you guys, Becca Well then traffic was awesome as usual, lots of cars blocked us but, got to experience some Nicaraguan heat!! Amazing time. We got to meet the pastor today …what a life story! Really inspiring what he did to go out and do what God put in his heart to want to do, to take care of himself. Then to look at where he is today wow, truly showed how God moved through his life. Sadly , thanks to the traffic, didn’t get to meet with the kids, but we will get to meet with them tomorrow at church. So see you guys later. Love you all Eric!!!!;)