It’s hard to believe that we have completed a week down here in Nicaland. As usual, the time seems to go by far too quickly, but today provided a much needed Sabbath rest and break from our routine.  After a very full and exhausting week of camp and construction, we now were able to take a day to rest and recharge.

All of our mornings, post-breakfast, we gather as a team where one of our students leads us in a time in God’s Word for a brief devotional.  Today we prayed as a team for our 8th and 9th grade students that launched out on Mission Monty (headed to Montgomery, Alabama) where they will serve this week.  We’ve got a great group of leaders and students and I’m excited to see how God is going to use them.  I’m always a bit disappointed that I can’t be there to experience that mission with them, but we have to overlay two of our three missions to get them all in before school returns.  But if you’d like to follow their mission, you can do so here!

From devo time and TAWG, we loaded up the bus to head into Managua to attend Verbo Church.  This is always a unique experience for many of our students to feel what it is like to be a visitor in church and also to be an outsider that doesn’t speak the language.  But we all do our best to sing the lyrics in Spanish and are always grateful when their is an english translator for the pastor’s sermon!

I’m always reminded of the great truth that “every tribe, tongue and nation” will bring God worship.  We got to experience today what we will practice for eternity.  And what an awesome thought to know that while we were worshipping here in Nicaragua, our faith family in Tallahassee had gathered to worship at Wildwood as well as believers all over the world in places of worship.  God is most certainly worthy of our worship.

After lunch, we were off to Wemby’s Market… an experience like no other.  It’s your one stop shop for tourist trinkets, to clothing and shoes, tools to flowers and meat… raw meat.  The convergence of smells is… well… hard to put into words.

From there a quick stop a La Union, a Walmart grocery store subsidy down here to stock up on cheap snacks to get the students through the rest of the week.  Then we all enjoyed some down time back here at the compound before dinner and our team time.  All in all, a great Sabbath rest and break in our mission.  Tomorrow we will hit the ground running with our full construction days.  So be praying for us that we would finish out this week well and that God would give us the strength for the work and the boldness to share our faith in word and deed!