See Something More

When we arrived at the one-room church made of gray cement blocks and concrete flloor, we saw thirty smiling faces through the doorway. The children at La Concordia had heard that we were coming to do VBS, so they were there to greet us with bright smiles. We had been expecting to do VBS in the afternoon, so we were planning to use our time in the morning to prepare and practice. However, we couldn't keep these excited children waiting, so we changed our plans. In thirty minutes, Emily and I trained the VBS workers to act out two skits, perform a puppet show, make the crafts, play the games, and sing the songs. Talk about flexibility and improvisation! In no time at all, VBS was swinging in full motion, and the children loved it. They laughed with us as the good Samaritan bandaged the wounded man with toilet paper. They sang with us as we taught them Father Abraham and the Hokey Pokey. And they listened quietly to every word we said as we explained that...

It all begins with a shovel and a pile of sand. For every five wheelbarrows that you fill with sand, you fill three more with rocks. Dump it all in a pile with two bags of cement, and you are ready to start mixing. There is no cement truck at the worksite, so you use shovels to turn the dirt over and over and over again. Adding water as you go, you mix and mix and mix until you get a lumpy, soggy pile of cement. Next, you shovel it into the metal machine, which will press it down and squeeze it out. The end result of this forty-five minutes process of manual labor? Thirty cement blocks. Today's job was a little different for me. Instead of singing to kids or talking to women at casa materna, I sweated and panted as I shoveled my arms off to make cement blocks. Rather than cooking dinner or helping with laundry around the mission, I got my shoes muddy and my fingernails dirty. At first this manual labor seemed insignificant compared to spending time w...

Mexican casserole, spanish music, and a giant rooster pinata make a great party, but what really makes a fiesta wonderful is the people that come. To honor the workers, staff members, translators, and preachers that work for Mision Para Cristo, we interns hosted a fiesta for them and their familes. Over fifty people showed up, and we celebrated with dinner, a pinata, and coke floats (which was a first for many of the Nicaraguans)! As I looked around the room at all the precious people that I have come to love, I thought about Jesus words from Luke 14:12-14. Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."...

The sunset on the beach took my breath away. The highlight of my weekend retreat to the Barcelo Resort in Nicaragua was this moment  - watching the sun paint the sky with glowing colors as it sank into the ocean. I could not watch such a spectacular display without thinking about my beautiful Savior. As I stared out at the vast waters and endless sky, the words to an old hymn came to my mind. Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made. Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade. To write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky. As I sang the words, I began to think about all the things that I would write if I were given a stalk, the ocean, and the sky. God's love has become so visible to me while I have been here in Nicaragua. If I were to write about His love, I would write about the children in Nicaragua with bare feet, dirty clothes, u...

Every morning at 5:00, the "Jinotega zoo" opens right outside our window. It is not really a zoo, but that is the closest thing that I can compare it to. Right across the stree from the mission is the bus station, where approximately ten thousand people come and go every day...starting at 5:00 in the morning. Buses honking, speaker systems yelling, dogs barking, people talking, music blaring. Noises of the hustle and bustle of Jinotega fill the streets. People buy and sell goods, load and unload buses, travel to and fro, and carry out all sorts of business. We can watch all the excitement in the streets from a large window in the mission, which we call our "TV." One of the first days that we (the interns) were here, we all stood watching this "TV." We observed the activities with fascination and contemplation. After a long silence, Jacob said, " Ten thousand people ....We ought to be able to do something for these ten thousand people." We pon...

I received my training in optometry today as I worked in a medical clinic in the remote jungles of Nicaragua. After driving two hours into the middle of nowhere, we arrived at the location of our mobile medical clinic, and I was assigned to work in the eyeglasses center. We saw around eighty patients today, and I had the priveledge to give some of them eyes exams in spanish. I even learned how to make glasses, which is something that I can now add to my resume! We gave eye exams the old fashioned way, which meant that each patient would try on several pairs of glasses and then tell us which one worked the best. Some Nicaraguans, upon hearing that we were giving out free glasses, decided that they wanted a pair even if they could see just fine. For this reason, we also had a pair of glasses without prescription lenses in them. After the patient tried on several pairs, we would give them the placebo pair...just in case. It was a little bit funny whenever someone...

Last week, our team of interns went to an elementary school to participate in their celebration of childrens' day. When we first arrived, we were greeted by all the children, who were delighted to see us at their school. We felt like celebrities as we were given the seats of honor on the stage where all the activites took place. To celebrate childrens' day, the school had selected a representative from each grade to model a dress, give a small speech, and perform by either singing or dancing. I left with a better understanding of Nicaraguan culture just by seeing their dresses, hearing them speak, and watching them sing and dance to their latin music. Celebrations can tell a lot about a culture, and I felt enlightened to be able to see it with my own eyes. The longer I am here, the more and more I begin to understand the cultural values and expectations. However, culture is not just made up of music, dancing, and dresses. By watching the people and listening to the missiona...

Back home in the United States, I usually wake up each morning with a million thoughts running through my head. What do I have planned today? What do I have to do and how long do I have to do it? How much can I possibly check off my to-do list in twenty-four hours? But here, it is different. When my eyes pop open in the mornings, my schedule does not preoccupy my thoughts. Instead, only one simple goal fills my heart: to love God and serve His people.  Who can I love in the name of Jesus? How can I encourage someone else? How can I be the hands and feet of Jesus today? My life in the United States is complex and busy, and it distracts my attention away from the things that really matter. But here, where living is simple, I have a more focused passion. I have nothing to do but look for God at work and join Him. I have no other appointments than to look for needs and seek to meet them. I have no other plans except to serve others with the love of the Lord. The onl...

We only knew each other for about five minutes, but we were already best friends. The only communication we had was my asking her what her name was, and she responded with a twenty-five syllable name in spanish that I could not repeat back to you if I tried. All I did was blow some bubbles for her and read her a book, but those simple gifts of kindness meant the world to her because after we had been playing for a while longer in the hot sun, she crawled up in my lap and just sat there. We did not really talk, and whenever we tried to understand each other's language, we both failed miserably and ended up in a fit of laughter. Once it was time to say goodbye, she gave me the biggest, sweetest hug. As the van drove away from her tiny school tucked away in the mountains, I waved until I could see my little friend no longer. The children here in Nicaragua have a supply of love that is deeper than the valleys that cover their landscape. They may not have clean hair or new shoes,...

Nine chairs lined the wall outside of casa materna, a maternity house for women. In each chair sat a Nicaraguan woman who had come to casa materna to seek shelter, care, and assistence during her pregnancy. One young lady was only fifteen years old and expecting her first child. Another woman was having her eighth baby. One lady had walked eight days over the mountains (while pregnant!), just so her child could be delivered in the care of casa materna. At the foot of each chair that lined the wall outside casa materna sat a teenage girl. Some girls held buckets of water, others held towels. Some queezed lotion into the palm of their hands while others opened nail polish. But each American teenage girl knelt at the feet of a pregnant Nicaraguan women to wash, massage, and pamper her feet. As I looked down the line at all the girls down on their hands and knees with basins of water and towels, it stru...

Outside the window, a man stands in the market place with a microphone and a sound system, yelling his version of the gospel at everyone who walks by. I watch him, wondering what the people are thinking as they stare at him and keep on walking. Being in Nicaragua has made me think a lot about mission work and how I can be a missionary in just the few short weeks that I am here. Part of me wants to be like that man. I almost want to shout Jesus' name and tell everyone about Him! At the same time, part of me knows that shouting is not what people need. At first, I felt like a true missionary is someone that is bold in speaking the name of Jesus, someone who tells everyone that they meet about having hope in Christ. Last night, as I was lying in my bed and praying, I was asking God to help me be the best missionary that I could be. I prayed that I would be bold, that I would do big things for the kingdom, and that I would be able to tell as many people about Jesus as I possib...

The song may not have been perfectly on pitch, nor were the singers necessarily in tune, but it was the most beautiful song I have ever heard. The Nicaraguan teenagers love to sing for their church, no matter how they sound. Tonight, the Nicaraguan youth group generously invited me and the other interns to join them for thier singing practice. They wanted us to teach them some songs in English, and we wanted them to us some songs in spanish. As we sat in a circle in a dimly lit room at the back of the church with chipped walls and no air conditioning, we sang from the bottom of our hearts. It did not matter how well we could harmonize, nor did anyone care if your tone quality was bad. We just sang to each other from our hearts. The choruses and melodies drifted from the back room into the streets of the market outside the door. The Nicaraguans sang to us with accented english, "I love you with the love of the Lord." In response, we sang it back to them in thier own langua...

I am a bubble about to burst. With every day that has passed since I arrived in Jinotega, Nicaragua, a huge breath has been pumped into my balloon, making it tighter and tighter and tighter with excitement. The last couple of days have been good, but not really very eventful. I am still getting settled in, learning my way around town, and getting to know the missionaries and other interns that I will be working with this summer. That means that the majority of my time has been spent inside the mission complex preparing for VBS, getting ready for some church groups to come this weekend, and doing dirty dishes. I will admit that these last few days of "down time" have been difficult for me. I would even say that you could call me a little stir crazy. Since the moment I set foot in Nicaragua, my feet have been itching to go somewhere, to do something, and to serve someone. I want to go to the day care, the school, the medical clinic, an...