It’s hard to believe that we are passing the halfway point of our mission here in Nicaragua. We’ve seen a team go and another few teams join us. Sundays are special here in Nica. We had our time alone with God and then loaded up the bus to head to Verbo Church. We love to worship at Verbo! It’s always such an amazing foretaste of the day when ALL the nations, tribes and tongues will gather in worship to Almighty God. Here we were singing in Nicaragua, while our Montgomery team was worshipping in Alabama and our faith family back home in Tallahassee. Spanning the time zones and the globe… our God is worthy of worship!

And it’s great to experience worship that is different than what we are used to. We all tried hard to keep up with the songs and follow along with the words. We learned that if you aren’t sweating, you aren’t worshipping hard enough! The freedom in worship and the expressiveness of the people is refreshing. And we were incredibly thankful to hear English as the sermon was being translated for us from the stage.

After a quick change, we ate lunch in the bus to head out to Las Parcelas. We took on an additional project to bless the community by painting the interior of the school and today was the only day it would work without disrupting the classes. But before painting, we walked up the hill from the school to visit our dear friend Manuel and his family. Our team four years ago had the privilege to build Manuel’s house (if you want to read the story, it’s here). We make it a point to come by every year and check in on his family and pray for them. After Manuel encouraged us through worship songs, we prayed over his house and his family and their future. What a sweet time of fellowship!

It was then back down the hill to the school to start painting. I never know how word spreads that our team has arrived to this rural community with no phones, but next thing you know kids are showing up at school to come say hi and to watch us paint (hoping for some play time). Painting down here is always a challenge by we got the job done and it looked great. As for getting all the oil based paint off of our bodies… well, we will just cover it with dirt tomorrow.

On the way home I surprised the team with a visit to the grocery store… it’s the simple things in life, you know! They were excited to load up on junk and couldn’t believe how inexpensively they could do it! Then it was off to dinner, team time, small groups and bed. We’ve got a big day of construction ahead of us tomorrow! Please keep praying for us as we labor and share the hope that we have found in a relationship with Jesus Christ! And don’t forget you can catch more pictures on Facebook.