Nicaragua 2016

I'd be lying if I said I never had time at home to myself, but, it is rare that I should think to use time alone to work on something like a blog or computer related. 

Time alone usually means that I sit in the sunbeam that comes through our sliding glass door to the balcony and read my Bible while sipping coffee. After thus finishing, I usually end up doing laundry, washing dishes and contemplating if attempting to vacuum the floor is worth it on account our vacuum doesn't work all that well. 

But! That's not important! Guys, in just 20 days, I will be kicking off my fake toms in the security line at the airport and hoping that I managed to remove all of my liquids from my carry on. 

I have a few new supporters this year, so I feel like I need to give a little run down of what my trip might look like.

When we arrive in Managua, we clamber aboard an old school bus and make our way across the city, amidst donkey carts and motorcycles until we arrive at theeee most beautiful mission house atop a small mountain, over looking a volcano and the rest of the city. There's a wrap around deck that is furnished with rocking chairs and there is a mango tree in the yard. 

We will rest there the first night, getting what sleep we can and taking our last warm shower for a while. 

Sunday morning, after breakfast we will meet our translators, put together care packages for the village families (Soap, washcloth, tooth brush, small toy), grab a pack lunch of some sort, and board the old school bus again. 


Depending on what village we go to, we may be on the bus for hours. It's usually about 5 or 6. There is no air conditioning and it's usually about lovely 95 degrees. I find this to be comfortable, but it sometimes happen that people get a little woozy. I HAVE been known to take a Dramamine to keep the nausea at bay and sleep off as many as the hours as possible. 

Once we arrive in the village, we immediately pray in and over every building, piece and place of our compound, and then we take over, setting up our clinic. We organize our medicines in the pharmacy, we set up the stove in the kitchen, we lay out mattresses in the classroom and take the little school desks outside and make our dining-room-living-room-blood-pressure-check-up-station-where-we-sit-and-wait-for-a-shower-place for the week out in the middle of our compound. All you need is a school desk in the middle of the sand anyways.  I can't even begin to describe the wonderful moments I've shared singing hymns in an old school desk outside, waiting for a shower while munching on jacotas. 

Once things are set up, depending on when we arrived in the village and not depending on if we are hungry or not, we set right to work. The pastors hold a church service and share the gospel and then our first round of a couple hundred villagers come through our clinic. 

I just put medicines in a basket as per the medical card I receive, and then label them all with the patient's name and take it to the pharmacist to be approved. It only gets overwhelming if we are short staffed, but that is rare as pharmacy work is nothing difficult. 

A typical day in the village starts at 5am. It is always best to wake up before the sun as there are no windows or curtains and we are guarded round the clock by the Nicaraguan army which is made up mostly of young men in their early twenties who are quite good at whistling. Which isn't bad.. you just prefer not to hear a whistle when you're swapping out your sleeping clothes for your day time clothes. 

It's never that difficult to wake at 5am as the roosters usually start crowing at 11pm and continue in doing so until about 7am. There really is no rush to getting ready in the morning, but takes very little time as there are no mirrors, your outfit is already picked out, and showering in the morning would be very cold since the water would have cooled over night. 

After dressing and starting one's coffee infusion for the day, there is a morning devotion and prayer and the medical team eats breakfast while us that do churchy stuff like kid's ministry head straight away to the first service. And then we rotate, Service, breakfast, service, pharmacy, service, pharmacy, lunch, service, pharmacy, service, pharmacy, supper, service. 

After the last service, the villagers go home and we lock up the compound for the night. And then we get in line for the shower.. which is 4 metal stalls set up in the middle of the compound with large vats of water heated by the sun next to them. With a sump-pump and garden hose, we basically just rinse off and try and keep the dirt build up in our hair to a minimum. The benefit of showering outside at night in the dark, is you actually have no idea how dirty you are and so you just imagine you're clean. ALSO! you get to look at the stars while you shower.. that's a beautiful thing. 

We keep that basic schedule until Thursday when we pack up and head back to the mission house in Managua. Once back, we douse ourselves in lice killing potions for a solid 15 minutes and then rest for the remaining hours of the day and we debrief with stories of what God did before going to bed. 

Friday we venture out to the market and see a bit of the local culture and Saturday we return to the U.S. 

Every year has been different and good and wonderful. Every year my heart has been in a different place than the time before. And Every year the Lord loves me deep into the bottom-most places and fills me with a joy that goes beyond words and description. 

I look forward to this year's edition of this adventure. I'm so thankful for everyone who is supporting me financially and prayerfully. 

I have been asking the Lord, "For what purpose have I been called?" I know a short-term, week long medical mission trip does not have a very big impact on the patients we see in our clinics. But, even a little pebble dropped in a pond makes more than one ripple. And sometimes, it's not so much the people we see, but what God does in our OWN hearts.. in MY heart. One week could seem like nothing, but, God only need us to be right in the exact spot He wants us for a short while to do an EPIC work on our hearts.

Some times our hearts have not yet healed because we have yet to be still for long enough for His voice to reach our broken hearts. And the healing we experience from a week with the Lord can echo into eternity for all our lives. As we return to our regular mission fields, our offices, our Bible studies, our homes.. the fruit of the spirit can ripen in our hearts and all at once, we can come back and bless the people around us and carry the sweet aroma of Christ.

Investing in short-term mission trip is really investing in a long-term missionary. So I thank you. You will never know the impact of your prayers or your finances until the Lord shows you in heaven, but I can assure you, for the rest of my earthly life, this trip will echo in my heart and influence decisions I make even ten years from now. It is no small thing. 

It is for Freedom that I am Set Free

It is amazing to me how much time can pass between my posts when I feel as if time has stood still.

It is hard for me to say where I am, but it is safe to say that I have felt the ground in my deep dark valley begin to slope upward, and while the going is slow, I am moving in a direction that has a sweet aroma of peace and hope.

In the last several weeks I have been reciting memorized verses out loud and claiming them for my heart. Particularly, the one that goes, "For He has rescued us out of the dominion of darkness and brought us into his kingdom of the one he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Hopefully I worded that correctly. He has rescued me.

And while I still can't see where I'm going, I know I'm going somewhere.

If you have been following my blog for a lengthy period of time, perhaps you read about the times I considered my life to be full and I knew full well that I was loved  down to the bottom most places of my heart. Every day I woke up and just knew "I am loved, " and that was the anchor of peace and hope in every day I faced. And life was so good.

I don't want to say my life hasn't been good. But, I realized when I was spending time with the Lord this morning, that I must have, at some point of fully trusting God with reckless faith, asked God to give me a humble heart molded and crafted into his likeness.

I also realized, that I don't grasp the weight of my own prayers like I should. I don't know the value of requesting things of the Lord. And thus, when the Lord called me out of my bubble of bliss, and planted in me in the dessert and said, "grow here, my Love." I no longer felt loved to the bottomest places. Actually, I felt like the Lord broke me to the bottom-most places. Like only He could have had such deep access into my heart and He reached that far, into the deepest glass balls of hope and into the deepest store-houses of joy. And with the squish of His fingers, the glass balls of hope were shattered and my heart shredded in the deepest places. Here where I had been blessed and loved and had praised God for every victory and good thing... here is where He broke me most. Where I loved Him.

I have loved my God for the good things. I have loved my God for the stars at night and warm fire places in the winter. I have loved my God for my friends and my adventures and the moments so rich with joy that the could not be described. For how can it be put into words the things of heaven that were so obviously from the Lord that made my heart to dance here on earth?

I had not the words to utter the proper thanks for those moments and thus there are no words to describe them. All one can say of those things is that God is good, and He loves me to the deepest places.

But then, it broke. As if the Lord has asked me to sacrifice my Isaac at the top of the mountain and did not provide a substitute. No last minute rescue, no intervention. God asked too much of me.

The Lord didn't take *every*thing, I still had a lot. But, that doesn't matter a whole bunch when he breaks you that deep down. When your heart is so raw you physically put your hand to your heart and try to breathe in spite of the pain.

I know it's supposed to be comforting when people tells us, "God has something better." But, that feels like the scene in Monsters Vs. Aliens when Susan is all the sudden re-named to Ginormica and is living in a jail cell that has absolutely nothing in it apart from a teeny tiny poster of a kitten. And the man who keeps her the jail cell says," We had the prison psychologist redecorate your cell, try to keep you calm like." and Susan, huddled in her empty corner says, "But I don't want a poster. I want a real kitten,hanging from a real tree." Honestly, hearing that it's God's way of giving us something better is probably one of the least comforting things I've ever been told.

I know it's probably true. But who wants to hear that the one we love and trust and have given access to the deepest places of our hearts is gutting you on the inside on purpose. Who wants to associate God's love with having your heart run through a meat grinder? No one. It feels like the worst betrayal of all time. And what's worse is, who wants to even dare to believe God would betray you so deeply?

And so, it did not take much thought or effort to simply close off parts of my heart. Too raw, too broken, too much pain to even think about a healing touch. No touch, however gentle or loving, feels good on an open wound. Thank you for holding my heart Lord, but I'll take it from here... you went a little too far that time.

And all one can think is, "I trusted you."

And then you are stuck in limbo, dead in your dreams for some unknown eternity. That crappy state of knowing in the back of your mind that God is good and He loves you and promises to prosper you and NOT to harm you, and knowing that you cannot deny that God just allowed your heart to shred to be pieces. God. God did this. And you cannot deny it.

I hated that.

How do you ask God for healing when you know that he would have to access the deepest hurt and the deepest hurts are there because you gave God access to the deepest places?

And thus I laid down in the valley and waited for time to let the tears dry the the deep rawness to scab over enough to even begin to start to deal with the pain. I know God is outside of time, but we cannot deny that our earthly time clock plays a role in a little bit of the healing process.

But for me, when I was ready to get up and walk again, and leave the valley and dance in quiet pastures beside quiet streams again, I could not find them. I raised my arms for the Lord to lift me out but I was not raised. I told the Lord I was ready to leave but He did not scoop me out.

And I came to realize that I know nothing. I know not how my heart beats or comes to life apart from the Lord's goodness, I know not how to Trust the Lord when the valley is broken and dark, I know not how to walk when I'm surrounded by broken glass hopes. And I know not how The Lord can be good and kind and loving when He makes my heart to be raw, and gutted and broken.

I do not know God, not even a little bit. And it is no small thing to say, "I will Trust you, Lord. Here is my heart, do as you will." The Lord is not some sweet genie who will make all things well for you just because you surrendered. No.. no no. The Lord is a mighty general, fighting a battle in victory and he will break his own people to ready them for the bloodiest battles. To condition them for death and pain and sadness and loss. If you show up and say, "here am I, send me." He's not sending you to a pasture of green grass, He is sending you to war. The pastures and green grass are for resting after your legs are broken and your head aches and your ears ring.

We were not meant for small things. We were not meant for bubbles and blessed good times.  We were meant to fight winning battles or break to discover our weak points..and then learn and fight again.

We have been sent to bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom for those held captive. We have been sent to care for the needy and provide for widows and orphans. We have been sent to be the arms of Jesus, wrapped around a broken soul. We have been sent to plead for our brother's and sisters and speak Truth when they can't hear over the waves that are breaking the boat to pieces.

And there is no magical formula for leaving the valley.. no prayer of surrender, no realization of God or perfected plan. We go where he leads, we walk where he sets our feet. We stand where He commands us to stand. But, we don't stand alone. Even when we cannot see, we have a hope, treasured in jars of clay. Where thieves cannot break in and steal, where moth and rust cannot deteriorate. A hope that goes beyond words. That holds on stronger than our hearts could possibly try.

A hope that sings out of the darkness, "I have come to set you free. And you shall be free indeed."