I've been in Nicaragua for 5 weeks now and I wanted to share a little bit about what my team has been up to and how we've seen God work over our time here!
My squad is living in Granada, Nicaragua and working with REAP Granada.
Every Monday morning my team babysits for a women's bible study that is held at the farm we live at. Here is a picture of some of my teammates and I going on a walk with some of the kids! It is an honor to get to love on the kids and give the women a break so they can worship together.
On Tuesday mornings my team and I do farm work. We get to help the organization by cleaning up the farm and helping with any work that they need done. This usually looks like pulling up weeds or cutting grass with machetes!
On Monday and Tuesday afternoons my team goes out prayer walking. We go out into the community and talk to people about Jesus! A lot of people we meet do not have their own Bible or know how to read, so we have the opportunity to read to/discuss scripture with them. This specific picture is of one of the girls on my team writing a bible passage in Spanish for a young mother to pray over her baby.
On Wednesdays my team does kids ministry! We go to a small rural area outside of the city and put on a kid's program. We start out by playing games with the kids and hanging out, then we sing songs and put on a bible lesson before feeding them lunch! The girls love to play with our hair!
Thursday mornings my whole squad splits into teams of 4-5 people and we go to a rural area of Granada and share the gospel with people. Most people in this area have never heard the gospel before. While prayer walking, my team has had the opportunity to pray healing over people and we have seen four people healed from kidney issues. My team also led 2 people to Christ last week!! The picture below is of one of our translators carrying a bag of rice up the mountain to a family we were going to visit.
On Thursday afternoons/evenings my team attends micro church. We usually lead worship in Spanish and share a message. Each micro church meets in a home and is structured like a regular church service.
Friday mornings my team goes to do ministry at the dump. We hold a church service for the people who work at the dump and then feed them lunch. One of the girls on my team shared a powerful message about fathers being the head of the household and the need for them to step up as godly men. There is a lot of brokenness and single mothers in this area of Nicaragua, so this message touched a lot of the men who were in the congregation. We have also been teaching them about the different characteristics of God for example: God as Father, his faithfulness, his steadfastness, etc.
On Friday afternoons my team goes to the hospital to pray and share with people. One of my squad leaders led a man to Christ while he was on his death bed! The hospital ministry is special because we get to bring the hope of Jesus to people who feel like they have no hope. Here is a picture of my team on our way to the hospital!
Apart from our separate ministries each day, we have 5am prayer every morning that is followed by a devotional with the whole squad at 6am. Each team also has team time every evening at 6:30pm.
There are times when I feel like I could do this for the rest of my life and other times when I feel the weight of how hard leading is, but God is so faithful! I have seen so many answered prayers over the past 3 months of being with this group of people (which I will post more details about later) and I expect to see more to come!!