Splashing Around the Love

Every night this week, we have taken some time as a group to gather in the backyard and sing worship to God. It's been a great way to relax, refresh, remember who God is and give our love to him. The first night while we were singing, I saw a picture of a map of Central America, and the six of us sitting in a circle in Nicaragua with our faces turned up to God expectantly. Then, from God's perspective, I saw him take an enormous bucket of water and dump it on us while laughing hysterically. It was pretty funny and made me think of how it poured rain here last week. The next night, I saw the same picture right as the song lyric said something about God pouring his love out on us. The night after that I saw the same thing except this time, we had buckets too. As the water drenched us, we caught some of it in buckets and splashed it on the Nicaraguan kids.

I really liked this analogy of our time in Nicaragua. We were together waiting for God's water, and he poured out more than we could ask with abundant joy. It was his water that we also were able to collect and transfer to the kids in playful love.

The next day after our morning activities, I was feeling pretty exhausted, so I stayed in the house while the others went out to the Villa for the afternoon. When they came back, they told me that their job had been to throw water on some of the newly worked on houses, and that they had ended up getting in a water fight with some of the kids who were out there. They told me that they had had buckets and threw the water in them on the kids (and vice versa) to everyone's delight. It was really neat to see how the picture of us throwing water on the kids had come out in reality the next day. Jason in particular had a great time "loving" another guy by chasing him all over the village with a water bottle ;)

I Will Not Leave You As Orphans

This morning we all went to the handicap orphanage in Chinandega that Amigos helps support. We got to sit and laugh with the kids and play music for them. I went last week with the high school group as well. It was pretty shocking the first time because almost all of them have clubbed feet and shriveled legs and arms.

I found myself wondering what God thought of their situation and what he wanted for them. The more time we spent with them, I was able to see their spirits. It was quite a sight. I realized that though all they seemed to be able to do was lay on mats, smile, and grunt, their lives were glorifying God. As I was sitting there with one of the girls, I picture came to my mind of what it would be like for her to finally be able to dance for her king when all things are made new. Also quite a sight.

When we got back to the house from the orphanage last week, I was reading John 14 and my eyes jumped down the page and fell on a verse that said, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."  It was really neat to remember that we are all orphans until we are adopted as God's children, and that we're not actually much different than the kids at the orphanage - just more mobile. God cares for them well and can redeem their lives as surely as he can redeem ours.

New Arrivals

Just so you all know, Erin, Jason, and Jeff arrived here on Sunday safe and sound. They walked through the door and we threw them into the mix. They hadn't even been here for an hour before they were at Vida Joven (Spanish for YoungLife) doing bible study with them. Jason walked in and started to sweep out the church with a giant palm branch, which was pretty funny, especially to the Nicaraguans. Somehow, they were able to engage and discuss with the teens here in Spanish on only a few hours of sleep. I was really excited to finally see them again. At Vida Joven, we talked about the parable of the sower. The kids' take on it was really interesting because they actually live in a rural area and see seeds planted, eaten, etc. more than we do. Studying the bible with people from another culture in a different language also gave the story and discussion new depth.


At the end, we gave everyone who came to the Vida Joven bible study some of the bibles that Core donated. None of them had their own, so they were really grateful. Here is the group picture.

Monday and Tuesday we spent in the Villa and they got to meet the children. They jumped right into playing, reading, drawing, and running with them. Some incredibly cute pictures of the last few days follow...

"Love My Children"

My favorite part of time in the Villa is playing with the children. It's amazing how universal the language of play is. All I have to do is look at a kid a certain way to communicate, "I'm gonna get you!" Then they shake their head to say, "Oh no you won't!" And we're off playing chase around the schoolyard.

The kids really love it when we come and play with them. I don't think there's much of a culture of parents playing with their kids. At least I haven't seen any of them doing it yet. They play together a lot, but the parents have to spend most of their time providing for them by working or cooking and cleaning, etc.  So they love having us there to talk to them a little and play with them a lot. It's really neat how the kids just light up when we pay attention to them.

Most the ways we figured out to play with them didn't involve much verbal communication. I played with a five year old boy named Junior for hours. He reminded me a lot of some of the boys I babysit back in the States. It was so weird how he loved the same things they do even though they live worlds apart. He especially enjoyed playing chase and what we named "caballo," Spanish for horse, which was a piggy back or shoulder ride. Here his is to the right...

The little girls especially also enjoyed just being hugged, held, or walking around holding our hands. They're super cute. They also really liked swinging, except they always wanted to swing on our laps. I was a little worried the swing sets would break with us on them, but they never did :) The high school guys also taught the boys to play American football, which was pretty funny.




Below are some videos I took of the high schoolers playing with the kids. Most are only a few seconds. The last one of the dance off is a bit long (like 3 min) but it's really hilarious, so if you have the time...

Nicaraguans learn to "Jump On It"


The Jump-Off-The-Back-Of-The-Bus Game


The hand slap game


The beginnings of football


And the dance off

Zechariah 10:1

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Originally uploaded by MollyInNica

I read Zechariah at the Spirit's leading a few weeks ago and got a ton of things out of it. One of the things I remembered was:

"Ask the LORD for rain in the springtime;
       it is the LORD who makes the storm clouds.
       He gives showers of rain to men,
       and plants of the field to everyone."-Zech 10:1

It has been rediculously hot here. The first few days I thought I might faint just from the heat. I was telling Jesus about how this was taking a lot out of me and my ability to love when we were in the village. As sort of a passing thought, I said something like, "I know it's the dry season, but if it would cool it down some, would you send us rain here?" A few hours later, it was pouring rain, thundering, and flashing lightning. I was stunned. Katie was too, and her surprise is caught on video here :)

After this video, the power went out (as Katie says it often does for a couple hours when it rains hard). I played in the rain a little bit, but then realized this power outage was gonna make things with a house full of 40+ people a little hard. So I prayed, "God, could we have the power back on?" Literally, right as I prayed that, the power came back on. I could barely believe it and sprinted back in the house to tell Katie what had just happened.

On reflection, it taught me / reminded me of several things. First, God likes us, knows what's hard for us, and wants to help us. Also, he knows what we need before we ask, and we don't have to "pray really hard" if we want something miraculous. It's not the strength of our prayers that sends rain, but the strength of our God. When I am weak, he is strong.

It also made me think metaphorically about how the earth here is "scorched," and that what scorched earth needs is rain. Situations here and the culturally/politically embedded injustice seems so impossible. I don't have any water for this land. But God can send a rainstorm, even if it's the dry season. This little gift from God made me realize just how mighty to save this city, country, and world he is.

Villa Housing Projects

The high school group that is down here is helping to build the houses that are currently under construction in the Villa. When Katie and I weren't doing classes or visiting people, we went out there and helped them build. We have been laying the rock foundations for several of them, which involves shoveling rocks from huge piles into buckets and carrying them into the houses and dumping them. Super fun. But seriously, after seeing so much, it's great to be able to use our arms and backs to do something tangible to help people.

Here's one of the rows of houses under construction with the volcano in the background.

One of our piles of rocks.

The houses are about this big.

Taking a break. It is sooooo hot and dusty.

Like, really dusty. This is my leg after working. You can see the line above and below my sock :)

Teatro Catalina

On Tuesday, Katie teaches theater classes in the morning and afternoon. She got some of the high school students to come too and we played theater games with the Nicaraguan teens that didn't involve talking. It was really funny to see all of us clapping, dancing, and staring at each other.

Here they are playing the staring game in the library. They have to look each other in the eye, and whoever laughs first loses. The audience gets to say whatever to try to get them to laugh. It was really funny.