Praying for the People, Searching for Land, and Life with 16 Orphans

Life in Nicaragua continues to be busy, busy, busy! But the Lord is continuing to move in our hearts and the hearts of our sweet Nica friends. The other day we went out into the community to pray for some neighbors. As we walked into the "homes" of these people I was overwhelmed by their living conditions. I looked up and saw holes in their tins roofs and thought, "If it rains (which it does 3 times a day now) all their stuff gets wet." Then I quickly looked around and noticed that there was nothing to get wet. We laid hands on the women and prayed that the Lord would heal them. The power of the Holy Spirit in those homes was overwhelming. Even in the midst of spanish prayers and whispers that I could not understand I felt closer to the Lord than ever before. It amazes me that in the midst of such poverty and despair, and with so little that the Lord can fill me with so much. It makes me wonder about life in the States. Is the busyness, abundance of stuff and instant gratification blinding me from the many miracles of the Lord? Just a thought. We continued to another house and prayed for another women as she stood and wept in our presence. Again, the power in that place is evident. We will return to the houses again with medicine for the people and simply to sit and visit with them.

We also got the chance to go with Brother Jim and his wife Blancita to San Juan Del Sur. Brother Jim was looking for a house that he wanted to use for another ministry he is hoping to start for men recovering from addictions. The trip took about two and a half hours. On the way we saw volcanoes, stopped and ate lunch in a nearby town, dipped our toes in the Pacific Ocean (it was my first time) and got to visit a remote beach that took us thirty minutes down a very bumpy dirt road to get to. We were thankful for Scotty and Blancita to help translate during our many stops to get directions. It is hard to find a place that has no house number or street name. It was an adventure, but we enjoyed our day's trip!

Life with the kids continues to keep us busy. Scotty is doing great teaching bible in the primary school and music in the secondary school. I am still loving on the babies and helping in the kitchen and the home. I also started helping Ana every day at the feeding center. People come from all over the community with buckets, bags, tins and anything else they can find just to get a scoop of beans and a scoop of rice. This is the only meal that most of these people will get each day. We really enjoy the afternoons when the older kids get out of school. Scotty is usually playing some kind of sport with them either in the gym or in the field. One afternoon, after our english tutoring, we started a game of kick ball with some of the kids. We ran into some problems when Scotty got so excited while playing with the kids that he would yell to me in spanish to do something and I would have no clue what he was saying. I'd yell back at him, "I don't speak Spanish!" It was all pretty funny.

(Where are we in the photo above? Scotty is easy to find.)

Musica, clases de ingles, y bebes, bebes, y mas bebes!

We are here and busy, busy, busy already!

Well, it is our third day here in El Crucero and we are already busying ourself with numerous projects happening here at MQV. Currently they are building an addition to the girls home and a new boys home on top of running the school and the orphan home. Needless to say it is organized chaos here, but we love it.
Scotty has his hands full with teaching music to 7-11th graders and Bible to 1-6th graders. They love him! He is hoping this will improve his already advanced spanish speaking skills. At the end of his first day of music, the children surprised him by saying "let us teach you a song." He said the song was better than his was and in english. He and I are also tutoring Debonney (14yrs), Joely (16yrs) and Cecilla (15yrs) english after school for an hour each day. Today he got to organize a game of kick ball with the kids. They loved it! He woke up extra early today to help with some of the construction of the boys home that is coming along muy rapido!
We got to go visit with Moises and Sarah last night and enjoyed our time at their house. We were both excited to have some Nicaraguan coffee and chocolate cake. We hope to visit with more of Scotty's Nica friends while we are here. Tuesday night we went to Leo's church. We packed 15 people in the van and headed to Diriamba, a town about 20 minutes away. I was glad I chose a seat next to Leo who could translate the entire service. There was lots of dancing, singing, praising (shouting), and prayers. Ryan, one of the team members with us, shared his story of how he adopted his three sons from New Hope with the congregation.
(Written by Stefanie, obviously)

Stefanie is busy with the kids. She stays busy helping to care for six babies (sometimes all 16 kids when everyone comes home from school), from 7 in the morning until bedtime at 8:30. Her spanish is improving, but it is challenging at times when the kids speak spanish and miskito. For example, "plune" is food in miskito, and "comer" is to eat in spanish. She quickly learned those with these kids constantly asking to eat. They are probably teaching her more than she is teaching them. Her day looks like - diapers, diapers, more diapers, "baño" trips, "plune," playing outside, reading, organizing massive amounts of clothes, besos (kisses) from the cutest babies and then of course more diapers. Ruby, who is 14 and weighs 24 pounds needs the most attention and Frankie gives the sweetest kisses. Ofelia is the sneakiest of the bunch, but you can't help but laugh at some of the stuff that she gets in to. Her days are busy but she loves getting to take care of these sweet orphans. She is hoping to help me teach in the school some days starting next week.
We are planning to take the kids to the beach or the pool tomorrow. They love being outside!

Look for more updates to come as we get to do more and more with the children! We are so excited to be here together and to see the Lord's work here in Nicaragua.

Back Again and Look Who's Coming With Me!!

It has been 7 months since my last post and it's time to update you all. I have been living and working (on a worm farm - if you don't know you'll have to ask me later) in Jacksonville, Fl anxiously awaiting this next trip to Nicaragua. However, this go 'round is a bit different for me, I am not traveling solo, but a beautiful & sweet girl is coming with me. Her name is Stefanie, and if you haven't met her you should. If you scroll down and read some previous posts you will see her in one of the photos. It's a good one where she is wearing my jersey number. The two of us are going to be serving for a month in El Crucero with New Hope Children's Foundation (http://www.newhopechildrensfoundation.org). This is going to be a very exciting trip and I can't wait to see Stef fall head-over-heels for these kids. She'll probably end up learning more español than me while working in the orphan home (House of Hope). I on the other hand will be doing random work and might possibly go back to Waspam to look at the 120 acres of land that was donated to New Hope to build an orphanage. This all went down last week and my dad was a part of the group that went.

After busily scrambling to lose 10 pounds in our bags because they changed the weight limit (literally this week - everyone in line was doing the same thing) and then a thorough bag search with security trying to confiscate our $8 gift of Halvah (still not entirely sure what it is) we are now sitting down waiting for our plane and blogging. 

More to come soon. Thanks for reading.