Today was the final day that our team split up into two groups between Posaltega and Leon. After another delicious breakfast of pancakes and fresh fruit the Leon team got dropped off first and then the Posaltega group headed out to their site.
In Leon, the team split into two groups to walk around the community with the Pastor and his wife to visit homes and talk to them about God. Both groups were deeply moved by the stories they heard from the families and the opportunities they had to pray for them and hand out bibles. It truly was only the presence of Jesus in the two groups that gave them the courage to share their faith with strangers and ask them about their own faith in Jesus. After the walks around the community the Leon team once again gave the church's lunch team a nice break by washing dishes, cooking, and plating food. This has been a true blessing for the women who normally serve the food because they spend so much time every day preparing the same foods and washing the same dishes for all of the kids. After lunch the Leon team prepared for an afternoon of fun. It started with an exciting balloon pop game where every kid tied an inflated balloon to their ankle and tried to pop everyone else's balloon before their own got popped. After the fun balloon game the Leon team finished the afternoon with every kids' favorite thing, a pinata. There was a pinata for the little kids and one for the older kids with lots of candy for all.
The Posaltega team began there morning by just taking some time to relationally connect with some of the older kids at the church. They circled up with the Nicaraguan kids and everyone went around and shared some things about who they are and what they are hoping to do in the future. It was a great moment for our team to help instill the idea that there is hope for the future for all of the Nicaraguan kids as they talked about their dreams. After getting to know the Posaltega kids the team helped prepare lunch for all of the kids and then served it to them. It truly has been a blessing to watch the team think first about others and their needs before thinking about their own hunger or desires. After lunch the Posaltega team did the VBS day #2 lesson that the Leon team had done the previous day. Tommy finished the study of Noah and the kids were given half a coffee filter to draw on them with different colors to represent the rainbow that God created after he helped Noah get off the ark and re-establish himself in the Earth. The hope is that the kids would take the rainbow home and look at it as a reminder that God remembers them and cares for them. Similar to Leon, the Posaltega team ended their time with pinatas that provided a great celebration to a great couple of days of VBS lessons. It truly was a great day filled with joy-filled moments that the team will hopefully remember forever.
Once our team joined back together we freshened up and went back to the church for dinner. Since today is Father's Day in Nicaragua we prepared a surprise party for the Pastor of the church who is a father of three kids and a spiritual father for many more in the community. We had a mariachi band that came to play and cake/ice cream for the pastor and the other Nicaraguans that joined to celebrate from the community. It was such a beautiful site seeing our team and members of the Nicaraguan team mingle together and celebrate. To close our evening we all gathered back at the hotel for porch time. Tommy spoke about the importance of faithfulness and how it is more important to focus on our own faithfulness than it is to let a desire for some specific fruitfulness drive our actions. Following Tommy's talk we finished our evening in small groups where we had the opportunity to start thinking about the impact this trip is having on us and what true faithfulness in God looks like.
Tomorrow we are headed to the beach and so check back for another update tomorrow!
