The Nica team started our morning with breakfast at the team housing site and then headed out for a full day of service! We split up into two serving groups, one going back to the Leon feeding center and the other heading to a sister feeding center in Posoltega. Both groups had similar days, starting off with an outreach activity to improve the partnership between the local schools and the churches. This outreach was geared towards the students in the communities that have aspirations to go to college. Our team answered questions that they had about the similarities and differences in the college preparation process. Each group loved getting to encourage these older students to achieve their God-given potential through advanced education. After the sessions, both groups helped serve lunch to the kids at the feeding centers. It was great for the team at Leon to continue to further the relationships that we began yesterday, and in Posoltega, we began to develop new relationships with the kids we served for the first time. After lunch, each team did a VBS lesson for the younger kids from the community. In Leon, we continued the Jonah story on obedience. The team played a few games with the kids before starting the lesson, and it was so much fun to see the excitement on their faces and their eager shouts as they asked the group to repeat a game we had taught them yesterday. In Posoltega, we played a few ice breakers to help build relationships right off the bat. We then did part one of the Jonah and the Whale teaching, finishing the lesson by having the children make whales out of paper plates to help them remember the lesson on obedience.
After a full day of building relationships and loving the kids, the team came back together for a delicious meal at the team housing site, followed by worship and porch time. Gena gave the talk at porch time tonight, encouraging the group to live in a way that reflects Jesus' love by humbling ourselves and focusing on others. After porch time, we split up for our first set of small groups and took time to take a deeper look at what God has been teaching us throughout the first few days of the trip. It was great to see our team really get to process the experiences they are having and how Jesus can be seen in our lives and in the lives of the children we are serving.
Tomorrow we will again split into our serving groups and head back to Posoltega and Verbo Leon for another fun filled day of serving. Please pray that God will continue to transform our hearts and our minds, helping us take the focus off of ourselves and continuing to place it on the incredible people He is connecting us with.
