She's Home!!

Our recent high school grad, soon-to-be Wahoo, Nicaraguan missionary is home! As she sits at the kitchen table telling us about her 10 day mssion trip with orphans and the workers who care for them, she glows! She is tired, she is glad to be home, but she radiates enthusiasm and purpose and then she says "I feel like in Nicaragua--everyone is their best version of themselves." And then she tells about 3 guys on her team who bring her & a couple others their lunch becasue they were sitting and listening to a Nicaraguan woman tell her story and they didn't want to stop listening just to get lunch. So, unasked--these guys did something they not have done at home. "In Nicaragua, everyone is the best version of themselves..." Is that what she meant when she said "Nicaragua always wins"? What happens there that gives these kids the freedom to be their best selves--their most loving, serving selves? How can we create space for that to happen here? She tells us the lack of  "distractions" (cell phones, social media, etc) is a big contributor to opening up eyes and ears and hearts to being their best selves. Sounds like a good reason--without those distractions they are "in the moment"--focusing on immediate needs or even just discovering that which they might not have ever even seen/noticed. Her glow, her stories make me want to be the best version of myself. By God's Grace, by His Grace--welcome home NICA team--we love you, you inspire us. Keep being God's version of yourselves...

"Nicaragua Always Wins"

That's what she told me this afternoon as she sat on the floor of her room packing up her 10, gallon-size ziploc bags. It is her 3rd mission trip to Nicaragua and she's learned how to pack economically--they only carry a backpack and 1 other carry-on. I was asking her about everyone who is going--some of the "first-timers"--wondering how they would do. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Well, I don't know, but Nicaragua always wins. They can do what they want but they'll learn--Nicaragua always wins." She continued with her packing, I got up to finish making dinner--I didn't ask her what she meant--what that phrase meant, where she'd first heard it. But now as the night wears on, dinner is over and she is laughing and talking with her sister and a friend who's come to say good-bye--I can't stop thinking about what it means "Nicaragua always wins"--what do they see, what do they experience--that they've never seen before? Another friend tells about his first visit to the orphanages around Managua that these students visit--he tells about how it "wrecked" him, shook him up, turned him upside down and inside out--he saw the "least of these"--the ones Jesus talks about and now he sees everything differently--"Nicaragua always wins". This is not an easy mission trip--it is steamy hot, they often do physical work in the steamy heat, the food is different, the lodging barebones--but of the 51 seniors on this trip, many are going for the 3rd time--as hard as it is--they can't wait to get back. Nicaragua always wins...