Psalm 25 Poem

Beautiful Poem I discovered on a friend's blog. I can't find the author.

Kingdom came.
Wars were done.
Over the earth birdsong not bombs.

Savior strode.
Despots ducked.
Down-trodden danced in the streets.

Deserts bloomed.
Toxins turned to water.
Scraped and scratched the soil sighed.

This my soul’s utopia fades like an ember dying.
The spirit thrives when the body is embattled.
Kingdom comes by conflict not a yawning eternity.

To hope is not to wait but to work.
To re-create crushed creation.
To rescue and redeem the ruined.

Trumpets and angel armies will herald
A coronation not a battle.
Christ comes quickly so we strive.

Nueva Imagen Leadership Training

I recently had the privilege of facilitating leadership training to the leadership team of one of the Christ for the City’s ministry partners, Nueva Imagen, or New Image. The ministry is in a time of transition and there is no better time than now for the leaders of the ministry to be completely empowered to make their vision for the ministry come into action. The training must still be running in my head because I am still using a lot of the key language from it! The four components of leadership we discussed were Vision, Communication, Empowerment, and ACTION! I am anticipating what it is God will do through this ministry and these women as they are preparing themselves to act.

The day was wonderful and although I was facilitating the training, I learned quite a bit myself during it. We traveled out to a pineapple farm in Ticauntepe for the day. Although traffic slowed us down and messed with our logistical plans for our arrival and muddy roads combined with water puddles that could be mistaken for small ponds all provided obstacles, we all arrived in one piece with smiles. It was hard to step out of the car and not feel surrounded by God’s presence and peace as I observed the beauty of mountains covered in pineapple plants. I felt God warm my heart and reassure me that the day was in God’s hands.

We began the day with a brief meditative worship session in a small ranchero overlooking the farm. We all shared the things we were thankful for, took quiet time to ask God to remove any obstacles keeping us from God, and prayed that God would prepare each of our hearts completely for ministry. We then moved into learning about the four key components of leadership and how they directly applied to moving forward with Nueva Imagen. As the women were sharing their vision for the ministry I was blown away by their hearts for serving women who are currently working in the sex industry. It is clear that their hearts have each been broken by something that has broken God’s heart and they have been filled with God’s restorative love to bring each of God’s sheep into the fold. When the day was over and we were heading home I knew the women realized they now had a lot on their to-do lists to accomplish, but that with God’s direction and love, mountains can move. I have been honored and humbled to see a pocket of God’s work in motion through the restoring work Nueva Imagen is actively doing in the world. As Matthew 6:10 reads: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s Kingdom is visible on earth and can be seen in glimpses through the loving hearts of the women of Nueva Imagen.

It was a day I won’t forget as I reflect on my time with Christ for the City: a day mixed with laughter, learning, games, challenges, relationship building, flat tires, muddy roads, and ultimately a day that God worked within each of our hearts to build the capacity of Nueva Imagen.

Futbol

One of my favorite things I get to do in Nicaragua is something I never had on my agenda to do here; one of the beauties of life is when this happens! That thing being playing soccer. It has become an ingrained part of my schedule that every Saturday I go with Pablo to an orphanage down the road to play soccer with a group of boys. A few weeks ago Pablo began bringing a few boys that live in our neighborhood. Now the word is spreading about going to play soccer on Saturdays and we could hardly fit all the boys that wanted to go in two cars last week! Now on Wednesdays Pablo and I go to the neighborhood and do training sessions with the boys. Yesterday was the 1st one. It was such a mess and such a wonderful one at that.

To my knowledge structured training sessions are a pretty foreign concept to these boys. So I set out with one ball, 26 boys, and a basketball court located in the center of the neighborhood to engender these guys in some futbol. It was a good laugh. It is our hope in the future to split the boys up by ages and have separate training sessions for them and perhaps along the way acquire a few more soccer balls, some pennies, and cones! Also, there were a few muchachas playing soccer on the side that I noticed on Wednesday night, so maybe there will be an up and coming girls league too! :)

The best part of the training session Wednesday was when we finished a 6 v 6 tourney with various teams, a little boy named Shelbin who was on my team brought each of his team mates home made popsicles from his house. It is such a joy to get to play soccer twice a week with these boys, both in the neighborhood and at the orphanage. In both instances I feel a sense of community and a slight escape from the crowded and busy capital of Nicaragua.

In other news, this Saturday is Fabricio and I's world premier of Youth Leadership Training in Rivas! Rivas is a town two hours south of Managua. Please be praying for us as we partner w/Lluvias de Gracia's developing youth ministry. Please also pray for the transition of Nueva Imagen to new leadership as Dona Helen prepares to return to her home in New Zealand. The women who are involved are dedicated to continuing to be a refuge and resource to women seeking to leave the commercial sex industry.

Semana Santa is here; it's really hot.

Easter is almost here and Nicaragua is movin and shakin. Holy Week or "Semana Santa," seems to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, weeks of the year. Shop closes up and families venture out to the pacific coast. To swim? Nope. Just to hang out on the shore. Most families fully clothed with beer in tow. Now this perception is all just hear-say. My Semana Santa starts tomorrow. I am going with the family I live with to Ana's parent's coffee farm in Matagalpa. There's meant to be a celebration for Natalia, the 1st grand child. Veal all around... except for the lone vegetarian who will be shedding a tear for the baby cow. On Friday I plan to take a bus from Matagalpa to Leon where all the big street processions and religious activity takes place. Managua, the capital and where I live, is slowing down with most traffic heading west to the beach. And the thermometer is ever climbing leaving me eternally sweating and thankful for cold showers.

I am very excited to be experiencing Easter in a town where it is a huge event. Easter is by far my favorite day of the year and the most important event in Christian life. Our Savior defied death and was risen after 3 days. I can only imagine what must have gone through the Disciple's minds as Christ was crucified. Jesus was meant to be the Messiah, he wasn't suppose to die. And after 3 days their original hope found in the Jewish carpenter was realized as he appeared to them and walked and talked again in a transformed body. I am so grateful for God's initiation of a New Heavens and a New Earth where death, suffering, and oppression will one day meet its victorious opposition. And what a reminder Easter is of the work the Church has to do between now and then to continue to bring God's plans for restoration to fruition.

Leading up to Semana Santa, I have been working with a friend and co-worker, Fabricio in adapting a leadership curriculum for a developing youth ministry in Rivas. Rivas is two hours south and on the edge of Lake Nicaragua. Last Wednesday 3 of us from CFCI ventured down to Rivas to meet with the pastor. He has really empowered us to come alongside him to form a structure for the 100+ youth attending his church. I am very excited about this opportunity to develop leadership skills in youth and to encourage them to think critically and be actively engaged in forming their time to grow and learn in the Hope brought forth through the Gospel. This is all exciting and a very new experience for me to be working with the development of a youth ministry, but I get to do one of my favorite things and that is to assist in structuring a program! :)

Since the last time I wrote here's a few of my non-work related favorite experiences:

- Venturing to Gran Pacifica (a developing resort where Ana's little sister works) and being the only person on the beach. Which was a blessing and a curse. It was awesome to feel so secluded, but also unfortunate b/c I was too scared to try to swim much in the huge strength of the Pacific ocean w/o anyone else in sight. I went knee deep and then got pummeled by waves!
- Getting to stand on the edge of Lake Nicaragua with a view of Ometepe Island where two volcanoes reside, one dormant and the other active.
- Learning and chuckling on the inside about laws in Nicaragua. It is illegal for a children under 10 to be in the front seat, but as I am sitting here typing at a coffee shop a pick-up truck filled with people in the back just pulled in - which is totally legal.


Blessings to all during Semana Santa!

Donde esta la gringa?

A question the 4 year old boy who is at my house all the time asks when he doesn't know where I am. (He's the son of the women who cleans our house.) Entonces...estoy aqui! Apologies for being such a slacker at blogging. The last few weeks have brought lots of encouragement. Here's a quick update:

1) Amber and I have been teaching English to a few women from Nueva Imagen and for me it's a rich time of relationship building with them.
2) One woman has left the streets for good and is mastering donut making as a new source of income. Each week they practice donut making after Bible study and this week they were pretty delicious and some even had a chocolate glaze. :)
3) 3 women are still working to leave the streets, but have returned a few times due to lack of income. Please keep them in your prayers.
4) I'm trying to translate a leadership curriculum (Leadership 101, thanks Melia and Steph :) ) into Spanish. It's purposes will be twofold: Training Nicaraguan women who will be the leaders of Nueva Imagen once the founder departs and hopefully for training a leader of a developing youth ministry at a church about an hour away in Rivas that has 100+ youth and no structure for them.
5) The women who are mastering the handcrafts are interested in developing a co-op, so we are working together to learn more about how they would like to facilitate it.
6) Christ for the City has a medical team in right now. I don't work with the Short term teams but was able to do some prep work for the team and know it is going to be an incredible week for the communities where they work. This is a tangent, but I am so impressed by Christ for the City's Short term mission work philosophy. Too often North Americans come here w/their own agendas and hand outs that only propagate a needy mentality. Christ for the City does an incredible job pairing short term teams with communities so they truly work alongside each other, sharing resources and knowledge, and the short term team members get a very thorough cultural education before arriving. This is such an encouragement to me given my ill feelings twds most short term mission work.

Please keep the following in your prayers:
1) That a youth leader will be identified to lead the youth at the Church in Rivas.
2) For Nueva Imagen's development in several ways: the development of sessions to provide education in areas such as health and financial budgeting, the transition to new leaders of the ministry, for job opportunities to become available to women seeking alternate sources of income, and for a ministry center where all these things can be further developed.
3) The short term mission team in Nicaragua this week.
You can also pray for the development of my Spanish. :) I can easily say it's gotten much better, but more in depth conversations with complex subject matter are proving very difficult, especially on my end of communication.

Everyday that I spend immersed in Nicaragua I learn more about the culture. Sometimes the poverty and lack of education are so overwhelming that it's hard not to be disheartened and to just ask God, "WHY?" Critical thinking skills are practically diminished, superstitions are dominant in the average Nicaraguan's reasoning thought processing, and since many pastors lack education a common service at church is a series of what you should and should not wear as a Christian. (Which is why I almost always wear a skirt whenever I am out in a community.) I know God as it at work and that God's redemptive plans for creation to be restored are at work. God is challenging my faith to be increased and to recognize my responsibility as a member of the Body of Christ.

Other than this, I continue to feel very thankful for the family I live with. The ease in which we get along and share laughter is a huge blessing for me. Ana and I are only two years apart in age and she has quickly become a good friend who I can laugh with and confide in. I can't believe I am already halfway through my time here. As soon as I get home life will resume being a little hectic. I am going to school at Emory in the fall to pursue my M Div with an emphasis in Church and Community Leadership. I have to find out where I am going to live, how I am going to pay for it, and all that good stuff. :) Very excited about it all and should probably enjoy the slower pace of life while I can!

Here's a picture I found online of a bus in Managua. I probably won't ever be taking any of my own b/c I just can't bring myself to be that gringo. But it's a pretty good depiction of public transportation and how I often get to and from the office and around town.

Hodge Podge

Well...I'm still being patient, and believe it or not I think I am getting good at it. Over the past week or so I have had time to contemplate all sorts of things: Life, my ability to be content with what is, the causes of poverty, the role the Church plays within the fight against it, how the vast differences within the Body of Christ work together to be an accurate expression of Christ's love, what God is doing right now in the world, what will one day be, and other important things, like what I should name the geckos who live in my room. (Marge, Frank, Sally, Smackwater Jack, and Machine Gun Kelly). All of this would be another blog post and a very long one at that.

Also over the past few weeks I've learned "La Ruta" (the bus routes) a lot better; and thanks to that the concept of personal space is almost gone on me. I've waited to do laundry at mid-night when the city water comes on, I have developed a fear of my shower due to the roaches that constantly build nests in our drainage, I've picked up quite a few Nica hand motions, I've come up with all sorts of fun answers for when I am relentlessly asked why I'm not married, I've developed an addicition to cacao (a drink somewhat like chocolate milk), trained Fulton to sit, and best of all my Spanish is getting a lot better. We also have this giant bag of pancake mix at our house...so I have been making a lot of pancakes too.

I've continued to network with other NGO's who are involved in small business development and have learned quite a bit. Tuesday of this week we are all going to an event at "Casa de Esperanza" (House of Hope) - another ministry that helps girls of all ages transition out of the comercial sex industry. They operate in a very different way from Nueva Imagen from what I can tell and I look forward to learning from them. On Wednesday of next week I get the opportunity to once again go with CHE to a community in Leon. This is a community of women from what I can tell and Roger will be introducing CHE as a resource to them. One of my favorite things to do here is when Mary and I get to accompany Roger and learn about CHE's transformational community development model.

Thursday I will be teaching a few of the women about crocheting with the plastic bags. Most of them already know how to crochet, so only the actual material will be new to them. I am interested to learn from them if they want to market the craft to tourists or if it will just be another tool for them to have. Either way I will be there as a resource for their endeavors.
Last week there was a team of pastors in from a church in South Carolina who did pastoral training for pastors in Managua. I got to sit in on a few classes which was really fun for me and a great learning experience. CFCI has such an important mission. A Nicaraguan told me recently that they don't need more churches in Nicaragua. There are plenty. The pastors simply need people to come along side them to assist them in building the capacity of their church, which is exactly what CFCI does. So needless to say I really enjoyed experiencing the theology classes last week provided for pastors in Managua who don't often have such a resource available. At the end of the week we went w/the three pastors to a park and played softball, basketball, and soccer. Yes...I played softball. : ) It was a wonderful time. The directors of CFCI, Alcides and Sileny are incredible models to me. Their trust in the faithfulness of Christ is very evident in their life. And Alcides is also a huge futbol aficionado (soccer fan) and quite good as well. I have never been able to play soccer with a boss before, so that was a good laugh. Not that it takes much, but he's way better than I am.

Also since I have been here my maternal instincts for some reason have really been kicking in. NOT that I am anxious to have children, but yes, someday, I think I'd like to have them. Some of my favorite things that I've gotten to do since I have been here have been completely unexpected: teaching English to a 12 year old girl from church (and then cooking her banana pancakes!) , playing soccer at an orphanage, and caring for Fulton as if he's my own dog. Okay, I don't know if dogs count for "maternal instincts," but I do love him. :)

So needless to say I am learning a lot at all angles. I have had time to read and reflect since I have been here and I am so thankful for it. I have started reading Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright and find it very affirming. He writes about God's current activity towards the restoration of all the earth through the resurrection of Christ and why what God is working towards is important for the church to understand. I have had time to enjoy the building of new relationships, time to spend alone and in meditation with God's presence, time to evaluate life altogether. Whenever I start to feel the least bit frustrated with the slower pace at which things move here, I remember how much I missed having time while managing...or attempting to manage rather, life in the states.

I have gotten to observe the training of pastors who were described by the trainers as desperate to learn. I have accompined CHE as they travel out to rural communities to facilitate them developing and organizing themselves to improve their health. I have seen women who have grown in leaps and bounds since leaving the sex industry and I see women who are currently working to leave and the huge leap of faith they are taking. I didn't know exactly what to expect when I left for Nicaragua, but what I have learned from such brief observations already are valuable lessons that I will hold in my heart for a lifetime.

And for the record, here's a few of the things I miss:
- Organized soccer
- post-it notes (weird, huh?)
- Biscuits with jelly
- Brunch food
- knowing other vegetarians
- Wearing jewelry (why didn't I bring any??)
- Easy access to a printer, internet, and cost effective phone plans
- My planner (I can't escape my addiction to it, despite leaving it at home...)
- Wearing my hair down
- The hills of TN
- Laws that protect animals

And it goes w/o saying that I miss all my loved ones. I am sure to develop a list of things I miss about Nicaragua come June!




This is Fulton, my best friend in Nicaragua. :)

I will be patient. I will be patient. I will be patient.

In all sincerity it would be very easy for this post to become a personal venting session for all the frustrations encountered over the past week, but that would be unfair and insensitive of me. Not only is my mindset changing, but I am adjusting to a whole new of communicating. Not just in a different language, but in a completely different communicating style.

Nicaraguans are generally a polite people. They don't want to tell you "no." If a straight forward question is asked, it is likely one will hear a story in response and then be forced to read between the lines to understand what the person is really trying to say to you. And to be culturally sensitive it is only appropriate to dialogue in return in a very round about way, lest coming off too pushy and forward. Also, it is very common to utilize a mediator to address any differences in opinion.

During my time in Nashville, the importance of transparency in communicating and being unafraid of conflict was paramount in accomplishing anything. Undoing this, or rather only using that skill set in the rare times it is appropriate, is a struggle for me and I am trying to keep from being discouraged. So...the saying is tried and true: "Patience is a virtue."

Please pray for me as I seek to be fruitful in Nicaragua, not only through accomplishing tasks, but as an agent of God's love with all the fruits of the Spirit Jesus exemplified and embodied in flesh and has made available to all.

With all this being said...slowly, but surely my work with Nueva Imagen is developing. We are designing a financial counseling plan, assessing the market in Nicaragua, the dreams of the women who have left prostitution, planning sessions for small business development and STD/AIDS education. I have a thousand other hopes as well for Nueva Imagen, BUT one day at a time will reveal the unfolding of plans. I'd love to draw up a long-term plan and follow through with it, but there's too many unknown variables to do that here, so again it comes to patience.

Also, this week I traveled to Leon with CHE. (Community Health Evangelism). Mary (a CFCI coworker) and I observed how CHE introduces themselves to communities. It was a great learning experience to observe community development in Nicaragua. Mary and I hope to introduce CHE as a resource to the communities of CFCI partner churches. The faces of the people in communities are interesting to watch as Rojer, the CHE coordinator in Nicaragua, empowers them to organize themselves to improve their lives. Too often people are provided with hand outs here, so it creates a mindset of a people waiting for people (usually gringos) to come and give them something, instead of seeing themselves as contributors of their own successes. CHE is just incredible to me and I hope to continue to have the opportunity to learn and observe CHE in action as much as possible during my time here.

On a side note...got my acceptance letter to Emory this week. :)