Today we had a full day at our debrief site (Apoyo Resort) in order to take a lot of quality time to process our experiences and continue to connect as a team. Our day began with a team breakfast overlooking the lagoon which was a picturesque way to get things rolling. We followed breakfast with our first small group time of the day in which we continued to re-visit our character Paul. In Acts 9:4-9 we see how God forces Paul to struggle in the unknown after his encounter which has been a good model for our own struggle on this trip. Our ideas of the world, God, and ourselves have been challenged throughout this trip and at times we had to live in the unknown of what this means for us and our lives. Following our small groups the entire group took 45 minutes of alone time to just be still, pray, journal, and process on your own with God. Since we do so many things together on this trip we found that some alone time was extremely valuable in understanding what God was teaching us individually.
After our morning of processing things we ate lunch down at the lagoon before getting to spend a few hours enjoying the refreshing and beautiful lagoon. The resort has a floating dock which was a fun location for the team to play in the lagoon together. It was encouraging to watch our team all hangout together and to see everyone feel included. Serving together throughout this week has helped develop friendships throughout our team that will hopefully carry back into Williamsburg. The entire afternoon was devoted to free time up until we had dinner at 6pm.
Following dinner we grabbed our bibles, trip booklets, and flashlights to walk to our location for Porch Time. It's a beautiful overlook that a friend we have gotten to know over the years let's us use. His name is Armando and he'll turn 70 this October, and his joy to see us and serve us is always humbling. At Porch Time we dove right in to singing some songs of praise and Luke shared about how Paul was told to get up and be baptized and wash away his sins and call on the name of the Lord in Acts 22. He was asked, "What are you waiting for?" and similarly, Jesus is asking us that question. What are we waiting for when we hesitate to give our lives to Jesus, when He gave His life for us? Small groups wrestled with this question and many others tonight. We entered Nicaragua with a "struggle" to leave behind our lives in America, but we will now enter America with a similar struggle to see and seek God as much as we have this past week. There will be temptations to return to our old lives, distractions to prevent us from spending quality time with Jesus, and a limited accountability/motivation from not having 30 of your friends around all the time. As we head to bed, please keep this team in your prayers both for safe travel tomorrow and for the true and ultimate safety we have in Jesus, that we would always be with Him, knowing He is always near us.
Our flight tomorrow is still scheduled for 12:20pm (Nicaragua time) and so we will keep you updated with our progress throughout the day tomorrow. If you aren't on the text list and would like to receive updated ETA texts then just text the word NICAPARENT to 41411.
