Nicaragua! Week 1

It’s my second week living and doing ministry in Nicaragua and everyday feels like a week in itself! Nicaragua is a beautiful country, our host home for this month is located in Palacaguina which is a very small town in the very north of the country about an hour away from Honduras. Everyone pretty much only speaks Spanish here including our host, which is very good for me to practice and improve my language skills! I’ve been able to translate for our host to our team a lot which has been a lot easier than I thought it would be (thank the Lord) and I really enjoy just talking to people in Spanish whether it’s just a “have a good day” or a full conversation. We are living in a house about a 20 minute walk from the city, where there’s a beautiful park full of statues, places to sit and talk and also a tower with a winding staircase that we can climb up and see the mountains on. We’ve made some friends with the local shop owners and get to stop in and say hi to them most days. 

We’ve been working construction most days at a church about 5 minutes away from our host. We are digging a hole to build a children’s school underneath the church and then they are going to expand the church over the children’s school when it’s finished. The work is hard but very rewarding. For the first week we mainly moved dirt, slabs of rock and chiseled rock off of the foundation to make the main room. We are working with men from the community, our host and his son, as well as the pastor of the church, David and his kids. We have a ton of fun working with them, listening to worship music, playing jokes on one another, drinking coke from plastic bags (you have to make an opening with your teeth and its awesome), and yelling “muérete perro” (the direct translation is “die dog” but it’s pretty much what they say for celebration) every time we get a big piece of rock off. One day I was going really hard at this huge piece of rock with my iron pole and I yelled “muérete perro” really loudly and everyone stops what they’re doing, my team starts laughing uncontrollably at me and every Nicaraguan there looks at me in shock and then after a pause they all yell “muérete perro!!” With me in solidarity. Haha! Work doesn’t seem so hard when you have such great people to do it with. 

Once a week we have a day where we stay back at our host to help make all the food for the day. Which pretty much means distracting Cecia, the rambunctious daughter of the wonderful woman Dani who makes our food and doing our best to not burn anything. Last week Cecia, Bethaney and I played hide-and-seek after dinner. However Cecia doesn’t really know how to hide or seek so she will just tell us in Spanish “I’m going to go hide” and then not a few seconds later will say “I’m underneath the table!” Or “I’m by my mom” while laughing her little butt off. Then it’s time for us to hide which consists of her going “y ahora, tu!” (Now, you!) and then running after us screaming “Hannah!, Hannah!, Hannah!” Or “Bethaney!, Bethaney!, Bethaney!” While we attempt (and fail) to hide. Wow, it really is the little things that are giving me joy this month. Being able to build relationships with people, transcending language barriers with laughter, and growing together with my team in Christ. 

I already have so many other amazing ways that God is working in us and through us this month but I’ll save those for the next blog (coming soon). We are switching up our ministry a little bit now this week, we’re going to be working with the church we attend and serving the mothers at the church in a completely amazing way (wow I can’t wait to tell you all!). I’m excited to see what God has next as we continue in this amazing, year-long journey God has placed before me. 

I’d also like to say a quick shout-out to everyone who has donated in the last week or so. GUYS, I received $1,300 in donations within the first 24 hours of my race and have received almost $3,000 in the past week!! God is so incredibly good and you are all so incredibly generous!! I’m at 84% fundraised right now and have less than $3,000 left to raise!! Let’s go!