After being in Nicaragua for about a week or more we weren’t seeing a lot of the darkness that we felt we were going to be encountering from training camp. We just kept going on day by day, going into the barrios meeting the people & praying for them & playing with the local kids. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun & great building those relationships. But then one day two other girls from my team plus myself where at a girls Bible study with a translator & the marvelous woman who lives here & helps take care of us. None of the local teen girls showed up so we just sat there & talked for quite a while. During this time God allowed us to see what major thing was going down in the barrios, to the people that we were getting to know & growing closer to. We learned from someone who lives here & who talked with the girls that once the little girls turned around the age of 5 they would start to be sexually abused by their family members. Then once the girls reached a certain age they would no longer be abused in precaution that they would become pregnant. It was really hard to fathom that this is actually happening to the girls around us, to the girls that we know! We talked to the team & informed them of what was happening so that we could all be praying for the girls or anything else we could do. One major thing that we wanted to keep in mind is to still show Christ’s love to the men that we encounter in the barrios or anywhere else. It is so easy to be angry at them & not to show them love, but that is not what Christ calls us to do.
One thing that is very encouraging whenever we do walk in the barrios is that the children are so full of joy & they love to be loved by us. One little girl ran up to me & literally jumped into my arms & that was one of the best moments. The only thing I could do was show her love, Christ's love.
