I'm safely home from Nicaragua, after a rather challenging trip. The best adjective I can think of for the trip is "crunchy." Some of this "crunchy" relates to my daily duty--making sandwiches for the group. By the end of the week some of the sandwiches even went Extra Extra Crunchy!
It's crunch time for the people in the ministries College Park supports. The Baltodano family who so graciously cares for our every need while we are there has been going through some challenging times recently, but continue to care for the mission groups who pass through the guest house with unswerving kindness, grace, and attentiveness. We couldn't do it without them! The church we work with is right in the middle of a rather sticky leadership shift, replacing the lead pastor, trying to figure out how that works. This also impacts the school and the kids, since the pastor also has administrative say over the school and now those duties have shifted. Those who work at the school need to rise to the challenge of dealing with these administrative shifts while continuing to honor Jesus with what they do.
The whole country is going through an intense time politically, with the president leaning out to the left, bringing new policies and programs and ideology back into play. This particularly affected my trip, since the Department of Education of Nicaragua has put a new constructivist curriculum in place that the teachers are struggling with. My job consisted of helping the teachers figure out how to better teach under this new curriculum, working with them to conquer the pedagogical challenges it brings.
The atmosphere during our trip felt heavy to me, due to all these challenges and shifts. The weather didn't help either, with each day bringing unbreathable humidity in the morning and heavy rainstorms in the afternoon, and thick clouds overhead most of the time.
Throughout these challenges, however, I was reminded constantly of God's goodness. I was reminded of similar situations I'd been through before, where God was faithful. The 2002 troubles in Honduras God worked together for good. The pastor shift at College Park that turned out to be such a blessing for the church. The fact that God sent me to Honduras not Nicaragua this past winter to spare me some emotional pain I didn't really need in my life, even though I thought last October I wanted to be in Nicaragua for the winter.
So the trip was a great one, because even in the hard times I am seeing God's faithful loving hand gently guide us closer to Him.
I'm off to Honduras for some doggin' VBS July 2!
