Mission Nicaragua: Day 8

It was definitely an exciting morning today with our two teams sharing breakfast together. Our camp team finally made it despite airline delays and even a re-routing and got settled in here at the compound, but only for a brief time. They hit the ground running today by prepping for camp, unpacking and sorting all the donated clothes (nearly 1,000 lbs.), gathered fruit and then headed off for Campo Allegria after lunch. Last I heard they have made it and were getting set-up for camp to begin tomorrow.

Our construction team divided to conquer today. The girls went back to Casa Robles to finish the painting of the mural and to tackle the exterior courtyards and family room and they did it! Sorry for not having pictures, but I headed out to Los Cedros with the guys for a project. We worked in one of the more rural and poverty stricken areas of Los Cedros. In fact, some of the homes/situations seemed even worse than La Chureca. Our job was to help some of the church members by adding plastic sheeting over the tin roofs to prevent leaks.

One house led to the next as we walked through this section of the community. Children were coming up to us begging us to come to their casa to work on it. Some of the sights were absolutely heartbreaking. All of the homes were so small and some only built of nothing by plastic sheeting and sticks. We worked on a home that had three women and what looked like 12 children living there. Of all the homes we roofed today, we only encountered one male/dad at home. Many of the children were malnourished and barely clothed. Yet were were able to bring some smiles on a hot day by handing out some small toys and just playing with them in between jobs. This was an awesome experience today and the families we helped were so grateful.

We finished our day with an awesome celebration of baptism. Some of our team members have been believers, but have never followed Christ's command to be baptized. So we had a good crowd all gathered at the Buzbees' pool for a time of worship, the Word and the sacrament of baptism. Praise God for these three girls and the excitement of new life and the opportunity to walk in obedience and service to Christ.

Since it was my last night with the construction team, I took them out for our team dinner to La Plancha. This is a really nice restaurant and we all walked away really stuffed from our choice of pollo, carne or pescado. But somehow we managed to save room for some gelato for dessert.

This has been an amazing construction team this year and we've had some great projects to work on during our time here. God has definitely met us here and drawn us all closer to each other and His heart. I'll be leaving in the morning to head down to Campo to catch up with our other team, so I'll miss out on the remaining projects, dedication at Casa Robles and the team's fun day on Saturday. But my prayer is that God would continue to work as the construction team nears its conclusion and for the Campo team as the campers arrive tomorrow for a great camp! We appreciate your continues prayer support. For more pictures and updates (if you are reading this via Facebook, go to toddveleber.blogspot.com)