Here I am! Contrary to popular belief, I have not been kidnapped by the Nicaraguan gangsters. As a matter of fact, we´ve actually been making pretty good friends with them. I guess the best way to explain why I haven´t been posting regularly like I should is because the last week or two has been surprisingly….dry. Don´t get me wrong, we´ve been doing a lot. We´ve been making daily trips into the neighborhoods and building relationships with those who live there. We´ve built up a childrens church at the place we are staying which gathers around 3 times a week and has around a hundred or so kids coming through (we hope to incorporate adults in soon). And in between we´ve helped rebuild the center which we are now living in so that it can soon become a presentable school, youth center and church for the city of Jinotepe. Most recently and drastically, a few members of the team, myself included, found a calling for themselves to get to the know the gang members with the intent to witness to them. However throughout all of this, the most I could really say for it is that it´s only been “nice”. As for me, I was sort of hoping that after coming so far to a third world country that the work I would do in myself, and with other people would be a little more grand than broken conversations about how many sisters and brothers we have playing tag with kids. I even found myself being a little frustrated with the situation at hand, and just wanting more.
It´s hot, and rainy, our clothes are filthy, our drinking water runs out far more than we would hope for, our food options are a little bland, and there are more flies than I´ve ever seen in my entire life (I´ve actually gotten pretty good at killing them, I killed 10 flies with my bare hand at once), and I would hope that after all this I could see more than a few kids playing.
Well, I don´t really know if I could tell you what it was that I did want to see, but whatever it was, it was obliterated by what God actually did. When I least expected it, I went to pray with some members like we do every night and God struck like lightening. I can say now that I´m on the other side, that I never truly knew what words like “God loves you” or “God will speak to you” or “God is powerful” meant. I can´t really explain what happened to helped me to understand, other than that the last three days have basically consisted of around five hours a day of singing praise loudly, screaming out prayers, breaking down crying for no reason, people speaking out in tongues for the first time, people passing out, prophecies and rolling around on the floor writhing. I have been speaking prophecies over people and praying in tongues for hours at a time and this world is another place now.
