There are days when God opens the eyes of your heart and enables you to see better than others.  Honestly, I think His desire is that we see with our spiritual eyes on a daily – even moment by moment basis – as Paul prays would happen in Ephesians 1:18.  We looked at that passage and topic last night in our team time and then set out to continue to put this into practice.

With all of our mission teams, we ask the same questions with the last one being, “Where did you see God today?”  Our heart is to teach our students to start to see with their spiritual eyes.  We know that we worship and serve a God that is continually present and constantly speaking.  We want to see and hear Him and join Him where He is working.

Today, we headed out for our first full day of construction.  However, we made a change of plans for the community day and decided to hold off our our camp finale at Chapel Hill.  So we invited the camp kids back at 2p today so we could finish.

Before they arrived we jumped on multiple projects.  We had a team ripping down 2×4’s (which are nothing like the States) to prep for the interior walls of the cabin.  We had a team behind the cabin mixing concrete and preparing to lay the trough for water control in front of the retaining wall.  Then we also had to move around 50 cantera stones from near the gate all the way up (literally uphill) to the cabin.  This started as incredibly tedious and exhausting as we sent teams out (so they could switch) with the wheelbarrows.  Then Henry (our Nicaragua Chuck Norris) arrived with his horse cart and then we were loading 10 stones up at a time and following the horse who was doing the work.  It was a huge blessing and made the job go by much faster.

Then the rains came and came hard.  This turned parts of the Ranch into a mud bowl, but this didn’t affect the camp kids at all.  We still ran around on the playground and had a game of soccer going.  We also kept trying to work a few of the projects, but the rain made it challenging.  Needless to say, we were all pretty muddy and wet today.

But God was so good (and we noticed with our spiritual eyes) as He gave us a break in the rain and a window of dry and cool weather in order to make the hike up to Chapel Hill.  All the kids from camp with our team hiked up to this special place.  Our teams have helped develop Chapel Hill through the years, so it is always incredibly special to go up there and see the changes as we close out camp under the foot of the cross.  I (Todd) had the privilege to preach the Gospel and invite the kids to respond to in faith to the Good News.  It was so sweet to hear all of them praying out loud to receive Christ.

The hike back down led us to the difficult moment of saying “see you later” however, we feel certain that we will see a good many this week at the Ranch when they get out of school.  And before we said goodbye, we handed out the backpacks, full of school supplies and a surprise inside.  They were super grateful and we pray the backpacks are a blessing to them and their families.

From seeing God pause the rain, to seeing Him move in power on Chapel Hill, we have been grateful today for His presence and plan.  And grateful He gave us a glimpse of Himself.  We are praying we are growing in our joy as we seek to glorify Him.  Thanks as always for praying for us!