Praises:
- Found a Spanish tutor
- Nice Thanksgiving with my teammates
- Opportunities to help with camp and youth events
Requests:
- Our Teen Leadership Camp next week. Four teens from SJdS are coming up for this.
- Painful back problems. Healing.
- Job & Housing for when I return to the USA in February.
- For contacts as I seek to re-raise support to come back to Nicaragua full-time.
“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son. . .” Hebrews 1:1-2
So now for the moment you may have been wondering about. When do I return to the USA and what are my plans after that???
FEBRUARY: I will land back in New England in February., having completed my time in Nicaragua as a short-term volunteer. It will be interesting coming from a “Tropical-hot” climate to the “Artic-blizzard-like” conditions that New England is famous for in February.
If anyone has winter clothes in my size and you want to donate I’d gladly take them :-).
Through your prayers, encouragement, and giving you have been very involved with all has happened in Nicaragua. I want to meet with as many of you as possible in Feb/March before I transition to the next place.
SO I’M LOOKING FOR PEOPLE willing to host open-houses at their homes, so I can come and share with you a live update of the past year. This is a great opportunity to invite friends, family, even neighbors, so that they too can hear about Nicaragua. PLEASE EMAIL OR FACEBOOK ME if you would be willing to host. Also would love the opportunity to visit your church or community group to share more.
Let me know your availability Feb/March
MARCH: I will attend the ABWE Candidate Class in Pennsylvania. The Candidate Seminar is when they officially finish processing my application and interview me to approve me as a full time missionary. There will also be a lot of training that week about overseas work and fund raising for the long term. The goal is that I be able to fund raise and return to Nicaragua ASAP.
But for the rest of March I’ll be be back in New England. I hope to find a telecommuting/online job that I can do from anywhere, since I’ll also be having to travel around and raise funds to get back to Nicaragua. If you have any leads please send them my way.
APRIL & BEYOND: I’m planning to move south (warmer, cheaper cost of living, more churches to connect with as I raise support, by a major airport).
Willl continue throughout the year trying to fund-raise until I can go back to Nicaragua (my guess is 12-24 months. But join me in praying that it will be a whole lot shorter than that).
So these are the future plans. But what has been happening in Nicaragua during the month of November???
Our Bible Institute had its graduation ceremony. It was awesome to see the Nicaraguan pastors graduate. Some of them have already begun starting churches out in their communities, other will be starting some soon. And fabulous too to watch the ladies who graduated from the Bible program and will be going on to teach the Bible to women, teens, and children in the churches in their communities.
The gal that received Jesus on the bus invited me to her mom’s birthday party. So I got to meet her family and encourage her.
Typical weekly stuff:
- Help teammates with ESL classes. It’s cool to see the progress the students are making and their excitement to see us each week.
- Bible Study with a teen girl “M” in a rural community. Pray for her, tough life right now.
- Help at children’s feeding center in an area that used to be a dump. Loving building friendships with the children and with the Nicaraguan volunteers as we prep and serve food together and do songs and Bible teaching with the kids.
- Help with teen camps. We have a big Teen Leadership Camp next week.
- Lots of other projects my teammates have going on. Last week, we filled Christmas bags and back-packs with supplies for families out by our ministry center.
- Each Sunday I visit a different one of the churches our team is/has been connected with. This is turning into a great learning opportunity as I observe and learn about how each church does things and their needs. Keeping my eyes open for future opportunities to get involved.
A couple weekends ago I attending an event called SUPER MATCH 2017 put on by Word of Life Nicaragua. About 9 churches from around the capitol city brought their youth groups, and the teens brought their friends, neighbors, and relatives to this amazing youth rally with lots of competitive team games, followed by a clear talk about how to receive forgiveness and a personal relationship with Jesus. Then the teens paired off in groups of two’s and three’s to talk with their friends about the message. My teammate Chelsea and I got to share with some children and then with a teen girl who is struggling with self-harm issues.
Pray for this teen girl “MPV” and for another teen girl “G” I recently met who sells sunglasses outside a gas station to earn a living.
GIVING INFO: If you would like to participate financially, here is the link: https://muldertonicaragua.weebly.com/contactgive.html