Sunday, August 4, 2013

Mission Nicaragua :: Day 4


Day 4
Today was our first full day of Camp.  It started earlier than everyone on our team hoped as most kids started to wake up around 5 am.  This is common since they follow more of the sun rising/setting for their day, but also, many have responsibilities and chores to do before they go to school.  Needless to say, for those of us who are light sleepers, hearing the kids stirring at 5 am was not too enjoyable.  But then, we are reminded that we aren’t here serving for our comfort or sleep! 

God gave us a beautiful day – enjoying the sun, an awesome breeze coming off the lake and a nice view of the volcano.  I wish I could get some pictures uploaded for you all to see, but I’m doing good at this point just to get a blog post up or some tweets out (twitter.com/wildwoodstudent or Twitter from the App Store then follow @wildwoodstudent)

After breakfast, we started right into our class schedule.  This is such a joy for me to watch – a true picture of the body of Christ at work – our students leading each of their respected areas: music, arts/crafts, Bible, English and sports.  They all did well adjusting to a lack of supplies and realizing that a 35-minute lesson is a long time to fill. 

But praise God all of our bags arrived last night and cleared customs and a big thanks to Mike Buzbee for driving them all the way down here to us at Campo.  This allowed us to quickly build the swim rope and have all the inflatable rings in time for swim time, which took place after lunch.  Having our bags also meant having sunscreen (some wish we had that a day earlier)!

Many of these kids have never seen and swam in open water like Lake Nicaragua before.  So despite fighting some big waves and currents at times, swimming was a blast!  The joy on their faces really says it all.  Something as simple as swimming is reminding me that God has given us all so much to enjoy that we so often take for granted.

The kids are responding well to our leadership and friendship.  It really is a great group of kids.  We are building on some established relationships with many – like Virginia – who we were privileged to build a home for last year. 

After dinner, during evening chapel we looked at how God has written on our hearts the ability to know right from wrong, but because of original sin – we never choose the right.  We are planting Gospel seeds by continuing to share that only through a relationship with Jesus can we be made right with God and then enabled to make wise choices.

Our team time and small groups at night continue to be a real Spirit-filled, challenging, encouraging, relationship building, convicting and learning time all rolled in to one.  God is doing some heart renovations on us for sure.  

Looking forward to all God has in store for tomorrow!

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