There is lots of things to love about Nicaragua. The food, the people, the culture; the very air is teeming with life. I could go on and on for days on how much I love this country and how much I have learned.    I have been waiting for the Lord to give me a really cool inspiration for a blog. And while many very interesting and great things have happened, none of them have really inspired a written account. That is, of course, until today.     Today we went to Bethel, which is the village we go to most often. When we go there, we play with the kids and...

The Lord has done a lot to bless other people through us these past two months, from passing out breakfast to homeless people to wig shopping with one of our friends who recently had brain surgery. I expected that. I expected him to use us to bless other people because it’s a mission trip. That’s why I’m here. I also expected The Lord to bless me during this trip. I mean, our primary goal is to bless others, but that can’t come with out being blessed ourselves. What I expected to get out of this trip was maybe a little more joy than I usually have or an epiphany about...

How do you release what you’ve held onto so tightly? How do you give up something so close to your heart? How do you cut someone out of your life that has always been there for you?   That’s what I have been trying to figure out. For a year, I have fought against letting a very special person go. Letting this person out of my life. Being obedient to God and just walking away.   How do you do that? How do you completely stop fighting for this person and just leave them?   If you spend 24/7 with a group of 11 other girls, you find out what they’re struggling with,...

     A few months ago I was at a coffee shop with a friend, and we were talking about how we were both in a place where life was kind of monotonous. I was a little bit discouraged, but she looked at me and said, “You need to enjoy the little, every day things. That’s how you get out of that hole.”       And how often do we look at those things and recognize them as awesome things, and really enjoy them?       This week has been a crazy week. Sunday morning was welcomed in by a 6.4 earthquake. Being the Michigan girl I am, I thought...

  So a handful of you all are still like…so what’s goin on in Nicaragua? So I’ll answer a few questions for ya and see if this helps a bit:):)       Who are you with?   There’s Jacq and Lauren (our lovely leaders). Then the teammates: Kate, Alexa, Rachel, Jennifer, Miranda, Kori, Kaitlyn, Jenna, Tiffany and myself-Grace. We’ve all been thrown together from all over the states (+Canada) and have formed a mini family. And I adore each and every one of them. *there is no significance to the order of the names, that’s just the order...

(All of this happened last week, so bear with me) There have been lots of different things occuring in the last week. Teaching classes and giving service messages, evangelizing to homeless men and playing with kids in Bethel. But through it all, one thing in particular has remained constant. And that is water.   After a church service, we got to swim in a pool in the middle of the jungle. During a group sleepover, we got into a water fight. After giving a service, we drove and sang in a rainstorm. And at the end of the week, we played in the ocean and watched the sunset on the horizon.   Looking...