Life in Nicaragua!

Hey friends!

This is a blog that is LONG overdue! Let me update you on life!

We’ve been in Nicaragua for for 3 and a half weeks! Life here is crazy, but also so good!

Our first week of ministry started out a little rocky. Monday and Tuesday, we helped at Palacagüina Christian Academy. It was so much fun getting to meet the teachers and hang out with all the kids there! They’re all so sweet and were so excited to have some new people to be with at school!

Wednesday we went to another community near Estali, which is roughly an hour away. We were helping move rocks to an empty area so they could fill it in with dirt and concrete to put up a new church building! Things were good, until they weren’t. By the next morning, half of our squad (myself included) had to stay back because we were all sick. One of us had parasites, one of us had a minor stomach bug, and the rest of us were just sick. By Friday, myself and another squad member were able to go back to finish out ministry for the week, but we still had to take it easy with the manual labor so our bodies could rest.

By Monday, most of us were feeling back up to health! Catherine still had her parasites, but was able to come with us to ministry. For the whole week, we took turns as teams each day deciding what to do. One day, one team would help teach kids, while the other team does manual labor all day, then the next day switch. This is what we did the whole week, and the week after. Whoever was teaching would help the English teachers teach English & help the PreK teachers with all of their kiddos!

Manual labor consisted of digging up rock and moving them to another location to build a wall at the school, breaking up the side of a mountain to put in a new water tank, and painting a mural on one of the blank walls at school!

We’d all have lunch with each other and the teachers, which was really fun because it gave us a chance to really get to know the staff at PCA and be friends with them. I even had the opportunity to help the PreK English teacher learn some new English phrases and American slang to use with an English class he teaches on Saturdays!

Along with everything we’ve been doing with 516 Now and PCA, we’ve also been helping with the young adults group from a local church a few evenings a week! It’s been such a blessing to worship with other locals that are our age, and play volleyball with them, and just be friends and be present with them! We also found out that a few of them have a band together and have music on Apple Music and Spotify (their band name is CMMT, and yes it’s all in Spanish if anyone is interested)!

This week has been a bit of a hard one. Monday, we pulled up to our new work site where we’d be helping level out ground for a new church. We were there for maybe half an hour when I accidentally stepped wrong while carrying some bricks and rolled my ankle pretty bad. Another squad mate also had to be taken to the hospital, as he had been feeling sick for nearly the whole week before. I sat out the whole day, just praying over the rest of our day and for everyone’s health. The rest of the squad also took turns taking about 5 minutes at a time to sit out of work and pray over our day and everyone’s health.

By Tuesday (yesterday), we had 4 people on the squad who didn’t come to ministry with us, because of illnesses. For the rest of us, ministry consisted of spending time with another youth group from a community about an hour away! It was sweet getting to play games with them and spend time with another group of people and play with the kids! By the evening, Raquel and Victoria (our leaders) informed us that we would not be doing ministry today because of all the sick people, which seemed fine at the time!

Cut to this morning, we as a squad had a phone meeting with our mentor, Hannah, where we were informed we’d be quarantining for the next 5 days because of sicknesses and not wanting to spread it to our ministry hosts and the locals. So now, here I am in my bed, writing my blog for all of you! So yeah, that’s been life recently!

Along with all the struggles, there’s been so many good things with life here too!

We live in walking distance from town, so it’s a very regular thing for us to run to town to the local café for frappes and to the town square for ice cream, which SLAPS after a hot day in the sun! We’ve also been making so many amazing connections with the locals here. They’re all incredible and so much fun to be around and goof off with! It’s also been a blessing to connect with some of the missionary girls here. I love hearing about their life here and the impact this place has had on them, and how God’s grown them here! We were also blessed enough to have a girls weekend trip to Granada and to go to León to hike a volcano and go volcano surfing (not me, I needed rest lol)!

All in all, Nicaragua’s been an extremely stretching country for us. We’ve been going through so many hills and valleys, and have been trusting God and His strength, and His timing through it all. We know He placed us here for reason, and even if we don’t know what that reason is until after we’re home, we know it was His will all along!

For anyone who actually made it through all of that (good job ??), we do have some prayer requests!

HEALTH! For real, we need so much prayer for health and recovery and protecting all around!
For our running water to turn back on. This is day 4 with no water, which means no toilets, no washing dishes, no showering, and no laundry.
Preparation to adjust to moving back home in 2 weeks

And last but certainly not least,