Hola from Nicaragua! After a long first day of travel and a
good night of rest, the team arose to a delicious breakfast provided by our
hosts at the Quinta Arien team center in Managua. After a brief stop at the
ORPHANetwork office site to pick up food supplies for the feeding centers we’ll
be working with, the team traveled to Leon to visit our first two service sites.
We first stopped at the Chapel’s feeding at the Verbo Leon Church to check in
with Pastor Jose. Jose gave us a brief orientation to the church before we
helped serve lunch to the kids. After serving lunch and playing with the
children, the team headed over to visit Pastor Ricardo at Las Chacaras Church,
a community that has recently started partnering with ORPHANetwork. Ricardo gave us a tour of the village and the
team got to play with lots of the local kids before serving them a late meal.
After saying goodbye to our new friends at Las Chacaras, our group drove to our
housing site in Leon to shower and relax before dinner and Porch Time.
At Porch Time (our nightly time to reflect on the day,
worship God, and share from His Word), we had a great opportunity to recap our
experiences so far and to learn more about the country from one of our
translators. Lex finished up Porch Time with a devotional thought and
challenged the team to engage in the “risky strategy” of “getting dirty” by
serving with compassion, just like Jesus did when he had compassion on a leper and risked being "unclean" to heal him in Mark 1:40-42.
The team is excited to continue to engage with Pastor Jose
and Pastor Ricardo over the next few days and to deepen the relationships that
were begun today. Please continue to pray for safety and for God to work in us
and through us during this entire week. Thanks so much for all your support.
