Nicaragua Pt. 4: The Big Take Away

I've been trying to process since before getting back to the states what all this trip has meant for my heart. My heart that was so weary and broken and cracked and dry prior to going. My heart that selfishly decided I NEEDED to go on this trip because my heart needed a week with Jesus. For me. I think I've finally realized something big. 

Deep, deep down, I want with my whole life to be impactful for eternity. I want all I do to be of value. Since I know the most valuable things are eternal, I tend to measure myself against my eternal impact. 

Perhaps this is why I find myself discouraged so easily. When one sits at a dual monitor computer for 8 hours every day, moving around thousands upon thousands of human, earthly dollars so that one can have a few earthly dollars oneself, it's very easy to feel very insignificant. 

There were a recorded 146 professions of faith during our days in the village. I was present for zero of them.. as far as I know. If someone decided they wanted to get their life straight with the Lord while sitting in our dentist chair getting their teeth pulled, I missed it. Not that I don't think someone might be motivated to prepare for death when a 2 and a half inch needle and syringe full of novacane is coming at their mouth, if they did decide then was the time to commit their soul into God's hands, I was not made aware of it. 

The mission of BMDMI is to 1) Evangelize to the lost 2) Disciple the saved 3) and Serve the poor.  

One of the things I keep having to process in my heart was how *MY* presence on the trip accomplished any of those things. There was never a point where I specifically spoke of Christ's love to any of our patients. I did not pray with any one, either. 

One might argue that I actually did nothing real important, actually. 
At least.. I argue that with myself just a little. After all, serving the poor is goal number 3 and is not as important as goals one and two. 

However, I also argue that my own heart is a mission field and *I* was reached by all that was done. The thing of short-term mission trips, while they might not even be able to make a tiny dent in the needs, they put deep gashes into our hearts.  The Lord breaks my heart in many ways all the time. With every rip in my heart, He uses something sweet to put me back together. 

And so my heart has been stitched back up with the fabric of Nicaragua. With peace, with joy, with patience, with love. One of our dear Nicaraguan friends who did not come to the village with us this year came and visited us at the mission house in Managua on the last day. We caught up a little and after being back in the U.S. I expressed to him the difficulties of transitioning back to reality. How my heart longed to be back in Nicaragua and how I did have much joy in the routine and fast-paced go-go-go that I live in the U.S.

He is wise beyond his years and wrote back, cautioning me to not find my joy in Nicaragua. He said that even in Nicaragua, you can get sick of routine. This is something I should be so well practiced at this point I shouldn't need a reminder. But the reminder was soothing all the same. The joy of knowing Christ in ANY country surpasses all sadness and brokenness and blahs in which we find ourselves. 

My hope is to someday move to Nicaragua. But I think I should not move any where until I have fully learned to be thankful and content in the circumstances the Lord has given me. Especially since it is different to be on a one-week medical trip with North American doctors vs. LIVING in the country with a routine same as I would in the U.S.

I've thought through the schedule of my day and how little I actually opened my Bible while on the trip. Well, it's not that I OPENED it little, is that it was not open for long and I did not read for whole chapters or books of it like I usually do. Reading one verse can sometimes feel like drinking with an eye dropper. BUT, I meditated on that verse about beautiful feet and what "Good News" was. Because I was just the dental help.

BUT!!! Here is what I learned. The body of Christ has many parts and the eye can't say to the hand, "I don't need you." I've known of that passage forever. Here's the whole thing: "Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”

 I realized that in real life I struggle with feeling valuable to the body of Christ. Having a career and just contributing financially and showing up to Bible study and serving in the nursery and suffering through Awana doesn't seem like anything good to me. Honestly.. I just feel completely worthless.

And as I've thought about my role on the team in Nicaragua, it has crossed my mind that holding a flashlight while a chisel gets hammered into someone's gums does not seem like it is essential for sharing the gospel, but, it was a small facet of the team as a whole. The WHOLE team was important to sharing the love of Christ. AND SO as I've been trying to transition back to the US and feeling like I'm back to being of little value.

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It's been a little more than a month now. If I was a good blogger, I'd proof read that previous bit for typos and to see if it flows well.. but life catches up. 

That's the odd thing about missions trips, life doesn't really stop long enough for you to fully absorb all the lessons as you truly should. But maybe the key is to keep on reflecting and straining oneself to truly think what it meant to you. 

Honestly, things have taken off at work. I'm officially official and have the job security I dreamed of a year ago and am gaining respect from co-workers and have a fulllll calendar with social engagements and people to reach out to and plans to plan and books to read and... things.

Life just.. keeps on moving. But, I am still taking to heart all of the things that hit me in Nicaragua.

THE BIG TAKE AWAY that I realized..as I was blogging about not being there for the professions of faith and what good was I actually.. Someone had to hold the flashlight for the dentist and help prep the needles and wash the tools and  be there. IF JUST the pastors were on the trip, when would have have been able to stop and preach and pray with the people? If just the doctors were on the trip, who would have hefted the 6 tons of rice and beans and give the families their Bibles?

If just the dentists were on the trip, who would provide the glasses so the people could read the Bibles they were given??

All are important parts of the team. That's a small thing to realize.. maybe an obvious thing.. but the important thing I realized is, even though I'm currently working a career and not leading any sort of CHURCH organized ministry, it's still important. It's important for me to show up to Bible study and participate in the body. It is important for me to read my Bible on my own time so I can share what the Lord puts on my heart and encourage other believers. It is important for me to show up and hold babies in the nursery so mom's can listen to the sermons. It is important for me to show up to Awana  (Even though it is the most difficult thing ever) and show love to the kiddos because it may be all the love they get in a week. At no point do I get to say, "I'm not important, I don't think I'll participate any more."

Alllllll members of the body are important. All people are important. Whether you have a career or no job at all. No matter if you're in a valley or on a mountain top, you're walk with the Lord is important for the whole body of believers. You can encourage and be encouraged.

And so, I've become more content with my job and position amongst my co-workers and friends and family.

And I'm thankful. I'm thankful for all who participate and bless me with their walks with the Lord. Who share their fruit of the Spirit with me. I'm thankful for how the Lord has pursued my heart and used my trip to Nicaragua to teach me to be content. I'm thankful everything on my platter and I'm thankful for you, Dear Reader. You're important. Never forget that for a second! You're important.

Nicaragua pt. 3: Summer sausage, Coke in a bag, Pineapple and Precious Moments

My sweet friend Jessica has been sharing her version of our trip in her blog as well and I have been SO enjoying reading all the things I wondered what she had been thinking as we traveled.

Since she mentioned that I tried to smuggle an apple into Nicaragua, I thought I might as well share with you a funny little airport security story.

My darling sister, Rose, is hostess level saint and when I had mentioned to her that I did not want to spend money on airport food considering we'd be in the airport from 7:30am to 10pm when we would arrive in Managua, she began throwing out suggestions of food she had that we could take with us.

She produced several things for us, one of which was a 1lb sleeve of Summer sausage.  Since our first flight was Omaha to Houston, I figured any sort of food would be fine to fly from Point A to Point B. Our group of bright lime-green tshirts was an obvious travel party in the airport and the fellow just ahead of me got his bag pulled off the line because his full-sized Bible was too thick for the scanner to read and looked suspicious. The airport security man pulled his bag, located the foreign object and said, "A Bible?? Good gracious, we need to scan this again." And they plucked out the Bible and ran it through on it's own, it passed.

Then was me. They pulled out my bag and said, "Any sharp objects or liquids in here?"
"I hope not!" I said.
He looked very purposefully and said, "AH HA!" And pulled out my summer sausage. "A sausage!" He took the sausage out of my bag and ran it through the scanner all its own and it passed.

My friend Todd just behind me got his bag pulled and the security man said, "Now what.. do you have any sausage in here?" He did not.

As I chuckled about my lunch getting us in a little airport trouble, someone else said, "Well, Josh had THREE scissors in his bag. And they let him keep 'em."

And praise Jesus for that because we used the scissors to cut strings for bracelets we made for the kiddos for children's church. 536 bracelets to be exact. I know that because that is the exact amount we were able to make and it was the exact amount we needed for the kiddos.

Jess and I split the summer sausage for lunch in the airport that day and it held us over for supper as well. Which is why when I was on my flight to Managua out of Houston at 7pm, I was not hungry enough to eat my American apple. We touched ground and I looked in my bag and was like, "Ahh!!! What do I do??" But I just kept it in my bag, until right before we went to get our bags scanned to enter the country and one of my team said, "If anyone has an apple in their bag it is a $2000 fine." And I quickly discarded the apple in the nearest trash bin. --- And that was the adventure of getting to Nicaragua.

You have to remember I had no use of my vocal chords at that point and so I mostly just laughed at the situation since I had no way to defend myself.
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Now let's see, I forgot to tell you, On Sunday after I had rested on my bed and before we started our clinic, we had an hour or two to explore the town. We were an obvious crowd of greengos as we wondered through the streets looking for a store. My most favorite thing to buy from a Nicaraguan street shop is apple juice. It's one of the most delicious drinks the Lord ever made and it tastes very different in Nicaragua than in the U.S.
We found a little store and one of the kind men on our team declared drinks all around and they had apple juice in a little juice box. I was SO happy. One thing they do in Nicaragua to save their glass bottles and get their 5cents back is that they pour all the drinks into a plastic bag and tie them off. You just bite a little hole in the bag and sip on it. Since I had a juice box, I didn't need a plastic bag, but our team pastor had to sip his coke out of the plastic bag and it looked so funny but it was so part of the culture too. They eat and drink everything out of a plastic bag so as to not have to dirty a fork or plate or cup. If it can be squeezed out of a small hole, it goes in a bag. I remember looking at Mike sipping his coke out of a plastic bag with the interpreters and thinking, "We are home."
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On Monday when I took a brief respite from dental surgery to practice my ukulele with the band, I had a time of waiting for my turn so I was sitting behind the stage with our sermon interpreter, Jeffry. Jeffry introduced me to a little girl, just 12 years old, and said she was wanting to practice her English and I needed to practice my Spanish so he told us to be friends. So she said to me, "Hello. How are you?" and I said, "Muy bein! Etu?" and so we attempted to speak, she in English and me in Spanish, Jeffry translating in between. But mostly we just sat by each other and smiled, not really knowing enough of each other's language to carry a substantial conversation. If I asked, "how are you?" in English, she would say, "Fine." She helped me practice my counting in Spanish and I helped her count in English.

My Spanish is very limited to things like, "how old are you?" or "how are you?" I can say good morning, good night, sit down, excuse me, and "Do you need the dentist or for your eyes?" I understand that is not a good sentence since it isn't correct in anyone's language.. but it was important to know since one day our interpreter was missing and a patient came and sat in our chair and her eyes became wide as dinner plates when she saw our dentist prepping a needle. She very quickly proclaimed that she needed glasses and we apologized for wanting to remove all of her teeth.

I chuckled at that a little. As in the U.S. you have to fill out a full medical history for anything and mark five times the reason you are visiting the doctor. And then sign your name all over the place.
Also, did I mention it was dry and dusty and windy? It was all of those things and we don't have glass window panes or anything, so I noticed that the table on which we set our freshly sterilized tools grew progressively darker and dustier and dirtier as the days wore on. It was kind of nice, though. Because you could see where a tool had been taken from and you could easily set it back in dust outline on the table where it belonged.

Another thing we do in the states is tell people not to eat the night before and all of that stuff.
We had a young girl bound up to our clinic at about 3pm one afternoon and she was chewing on a watermelon. Our interpreter asked what she needed and her mom said she needed a tooth removed. The interpreter told her to finish her watermelon first because she wouldn't be able to eat any more for a while after.

Another patient we had had a tooth with roots very deep in his gums that took a lot of work to get out. Our sweet North American dentist kept adding stitches to get it to stop bleeding and was very concerned that he not do anything in the hot sun. She had him wait inside our clinic so she could check the bleeding every ten minutes and add a stitch or two. After 45 minutes or so, it seemed like the bleeding stopped enough to let him go home, but Holly asked the interpreter a couple of times to make sure the young man knew not to lift anything heavy or spend too much time outside.

It were those times that I thought about how much I liked the ease and simplicity of this way of doing things. Perhaps it sounds un-safe or sketchy, but it was so relaxed and..simple. People walked in, we treated them, we gave them antibiotics, we sent them home.

I really like simple.

I have mentioned before that one of the ways to get past the blood and gore of the dental clinic was to have sweet conversations with everyone in there.

One night after getting out of the dentistry, Our interpreter, Jeffry asked me "something something nueva amiga" something.. it was in Spanish and I was thoroughly confused. Jessica translated for me and let me know he was asking about my new friend. After some confusion about what new friend he was talking about we sorted it out that he was referring to the little girl at the church tent and I told him all was well.

He asked Jessica in Spanish how her day was and after she responded she asked what he did that day.
I don't know Spanish well at all so I didn't find much interest in the conversation. Jessica turned to me and explained,  "he asked me about my day so I asked about his and what he did today. He said he's been lazy all day." I chuckled. And she said, "I know in English we joke but I think he's being serious. He said he's the right hand of Darrel so he just supervises." I laughed again and said, "He interprets for all the church services." Jess didn't catch that I said that I guess and went on conversing in Spanish. Just as I was heading toward church for the evening Jess caught up to me and apologized that she had mis-informed me that Jeffry was being serious. She explained that he was joking about being the right hand of Darrel and it was all confusing and they both decided that being the right hand of anyone is a joke in both English and Spanish. I assured her that, yes, I knew he was joking and she did not accidentally make me to lose all respect for the guy. (We both shared a good chuckle over the ordeal all the same).

Later that night at church, they invited our team captain up to share a few words with all the people. Being clever, I suppose, The Captain decided to speak about how we are all the body of Christ and some of us, "are the right hand of God, " (At which point Jeffry, who was translating this, smirked a little as he relayed this to the people) and then The Captain said, "And you guys are the left hand of God." (Jeffry giggled when he translated that.) And Jessica and Jeffry made eye contact and realized that maybe it's not always a joke.

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Monday night was also the night I discovered one could drag a plastic chair into the shower stall with them so one doesn't have to risk dropping one's sleeping pants onto the sopping wet ground when grabbing them from the hook in the stall. Also, the conversation before the showering was so rich and wonderful. As we gathered in our chairs awaiting an open stall, we all began taking turns sharing our God stories and delighting in all the Lord had done to bring us to this exact moment that we would be sitting in plastic chairs in the middle of a school yard in Nicaragua waiting to run a little bit of water over our dirt matted heads.

God is good, guys. How else would you explain a moment like that? It makes you feel small and precious all at once.

I think it was also Monday night that the "Tooth Brushing Squad" was established as an official group. It was me and the 15yr old, Josh, as well as the 14yr old Evey. There is one accessible water source for drinking and teeth brushing once the sun has gone down and humans have begun go to sleep and that is the cooler just outside our make-shift kitchen. Josh and Evey were brushing their teeth by the cooler and as I joined the party we decided to make it an official thing and we rather loved to meet up by the cooler in the nights after.

That's a silly thing, I know. But, it was one of those beautiful moments where I appreciated that age is just a number and maturity is everything to do with how well you love the Lord. They could have been my age or I could have been theirs... but we talked more of how God was encouraging our hearts and the things we were enjoying in the precious minutes by the cooler. I LOVED that. I really did. 

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Tuesday morning my voice was almost back and one of the girls asked if I might help lead our devotions group in a worship song. We did Amazing Grace (Chains are gone).. she on her guitar and me on my Uke. Some people might say that you can't sing at 6:45am.. but seeing as we all were well awake by the point, it was a beautiful sound and it was another moment I treasured in my heart.

I remember when I received my breakfast pancake Tuesday morning, I wasn't actually hungry and couldn't make myself to eat it. I ate some of my pineapple, but soon brought my plate over to Josh, who would eat anything and everything for anybody.. what a kind soul. That is only significant to know because I didn't start out in Dentistry on Tuesday. I was in pharmacy/ Family pack to start but wasn't doing anything that couldn't be done by any of the other bodies present and right about 9am I was all the sudden starving hungry. I had told Connor that I would relieve him dentistry where he was stationed and felt real nauseated and it wasn't even that hot out yet.
I walked over to the kitchen, bleached my hands and popped my head in, which is usually completely off limits (Distracting the cooks is a huge no-no) and asked what the chances were that I might cheat the rules and procure some fruit. They invited me inside and gave me a whole bowl of fresh cut pineapple and a glass of water.

I felt so entirely loved.

I took my pineapple outside to the shade and enjoyed it while feeling a little guilt since I wasn't doing anything more than sitting in the shade eating pineapple. I was almost finished when Connor came out the Dentistry claiming to be in much need of water as he had never experienced almost fainting at the sight of blood to this point of his life. Connor is an old farmer man. Well.. he's only 21 years old.. but he's an old farmer man anyways. He bought his first house and farm acreage at the ripe old age of 20 and lives his bachelor life with his cows and corn and bean fields and is on the county board for soil management..or something like that. He's a little difficult to explain. But my point is, you know it was a bad one if HE is nearly fainting since farmers see blood all the time. To be fair, though, they did make him hammer the chisel into the patient's gum. I finished my pineapple and told him I could take over since his muscles were more useful for lifting the 100lb sacks of beans in family pack anyhow.

And so there I was, rubber gloves and flashlight in hand, washing tools and handing gauze to the dentists to stop the bleeding. It was a slower day than the one before.. only 36 patients that day. That's not many considering we had 8 hours to see them. But it was another good day of getting to know people and talking about Jesus.

Those are the hours that can't be written because there are not many good words to describe them. Micah and I shared a particularly bloody patient, him holding the tools basket and me holding the light.. asking him why he loved the Lord and how he ended up in Nicaragua was a good distraction. Having our interpreter explain to me the actual CULTURE of Nicaragua and why it is so important to our witness that we greengas wear skirts instead of pants or shorts and how he came to know the Lord what God has been doing in his life these many years and why he leaves his family for a week to be our interpreter in a village that is not his village... those are rich moments. Sobering moments. The ones that you have to think about for a long time after because they bare more weight than the moment allows.



I'll write more about those precious moments in the next blog. This one is already getting too long!


Stay tuned!

Beautiful Feet

Let it not go unsaid that miracles still happen in many obvious ways. 

Friday night before my friend Jessica and I set out for our grand adventure, we stayed with my sister, Rose in Omaha. We talked a bunch about the power of prayer and how silly it is that we don't pray for the things we need, however great or small. And even when we do pray, we sometimes explain it away as if it were going to happen that way anyways. 

Wouldn't it be just the Lord to remind us the importance of prayer just before we would need to practice it most?

The first big miracle that we witnessed was water.

Our sweet little village has been in a drought for three years. The fields are dried up and they walk their cattle to a water source twice a day to keep them alive. 

The village water gets turned on every 15 days and they are required to ration their water. Whenst we arrived on Sunday morning, there was no water in our shower barrels and we were told there would be no water until Tuesday. We could have survived without water. We were dirty, yes, but we could have survived. 

But, in our pray-over-the-compound moments, a group of the team gathered around the water barrels and prayed for water. Our local missionary made a final phone call, and there was water coming out of the pipes within minutes. MINUTES, guys. 

As I said in the previous post, our first Sunday in the village was pretty busy..especially for dentistry. I handled the blood better than I expected and was rather relieved when our last patient left a little after 6pm. 

We then had supper and were told that church would be at 7pm across the way. I had not explored our church tent during the day time and it gets dark right at 6pm everyday. With flashlights in hand, the group of us left the compound and found ourselves marching across a dried field, trying not to catch our skirts on the dried plants along the way. It was a little bit of jaunt but we made it. 

In the past I've met our first church service with such excitement and high energy, but this one I found myself collapsing into my chair telling myself to stay awake a little longer. I had no voice so I could not sing, but I was rather content to listen and clap along. It, again, made me to be thankful for times I did have a voice and was able to participate in worship. You don't realize how much you enjoy being able to partake with your voice until you aren't able.

We trudged on back to our little compound around 9pm and gathered our shower things and began did what we could to rinse the dirt out of our hair. I think I was tucked into my bed sometime around 10pm.

Devotions began at 6:45am Monday morning, and in my mind I thought I might sleep in til 6:30 in attempt to be fully rested for the first full day of clinics. But, the sun is well up in the air by 5am and it was around that time that most of my roommates were moving about readying for the day anyways. I suppose the only difficult thing about waking around5am is that the kitchen and access to coffee was not available until 7am. So it took a little effort to partake in human interaction in the hours before that. My voice was slowly coming back.. I sounded like a man..especially in the morning, but I was at least able to say words.

Our patients for Dentistry began to trickle in sometime around 8am. Now familiar with the process of prepping 
the surgical basket with tools and holding the light for the dentists, it was easy to find a rhythm. We were on our feet the whole time, but I didn't notice being tired until I was given a chance to sit down at lunch time.It was a good sort of tired. The kind one is extremely proud of and would wish for every day if it were possible.

There was only one very bad tooth extraction that I had to step out of.The top of the tooth had broken off when the doctor grasped it and the roots were very deep into her gum. The digging and the chiseling and the amount of blood and puss I watched our patient swallow got to me after a while. As there was no one to take over, I gagged and kept holding the light as that is all the situation would allow. By God's good graces, the part where I felt myself beginning to vomit was the exact moment one of our nurses came in to take pictures. When she noticed the tears streaming down my face from dry heaving, she immediately took over the light and allowed me to sit and drink water for a bit. 

And that is how our days in dentistry went. 122 patients, and over 130 teeth pulled. The hardest ones were the little children who screamed and wailed and cried and had to be sat on by their parents. But our conversations to distract us from the blood and tears were rich and wonderful.

On Monday we finished our last patient close to 6:45pm. The sun set at 6pm and that is also when supper was to have started as well. Since church was at 7pm, we hustled out of there quickly to freshen ourselves a little before heading to church. 

I think it must have been monday afternoon at some point that I sneaked out of the dentistry and practiced a little ukulele with the worship band. In church that night I got to play "allabre" with the band and it was wonderful. Like all of my dreams coming true. People were clapping along and it was wonderful! It was funny also, because I have sung with the band in the past and the pastor announced to everyone that I would be singing.. and  I had no voice. But the translator corrected him to let him know I'd simply be playing my ukulele. So much fun!

Showering at night time was also wonderful. It was after monday night's shower that I realized that my feet were just as bad coming out of the shower as when I'd gone in.. and then worse because my wet feet collected more dirt. But we gathered our feet together and thought of the Bible verse that goes " How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion "Your God Reigns!"" (Isaiah 52:7) 

We proudly admired our Nicaraguan tan lines... which were really just dirt lines from the constant blowing of dust all day. It became our theme verse in a way.. at least among those I conversed with and compared feet with..we kept telling each other, "Your feet are beautiful!" If water wasn't such a scarce commodity, I think I would have loved to do a foot washing at some point.. perhaps in a future trip we could offer that just for the sake of being literal as Jesus was. I washed my feet with a rag on Tuesday nigh and the rag wasn't the color it started. The rag became a dark brown and the dark brown did not come out when rinsed with water and rung out. I loved it, though. I loved to have dirty feet. I loved that my feet were blistered and bleeding and sore and tired. It was beautiful to me.

A Brief Introduction

There is a lot of processing about Nicaragua that still needs to be done, but that will take a very long time.

For now I can share with you some special things that brought my heart to life and ripped me to pieces all at once. That is the hard thing of Nicaragua. My heart living and breaking all at once. Falling in love with the people, with the sounds, with the culture, with the pace.. and then being thrust back into the real world while trying to make sense of what God just showed you.

We arrived in Managua around 9:30pm Saturday night and walked into the doors of the mission house shortly before 11pm. We were fed rice and some sort of beef something with vegetables we didn't recognize. 

The bus ride to the Mission House from the air port, it felt like coming home. 

We were given instructions to be ready to go by 7:15am and let go for the night. I showered one last normal shower and crawled into my bed. 

I was very sick when I started the trip. I was congested, I had no voice and my ears failed to clear on the airplane and I was almost as deaf as I was mute. I communicated a lot with pointing and gesturing and whispering. I tried to find ways to be thankful for it. I wondered what the Lord wanted me to learn by not being fully healthy before heading out into the village. I missed my voice for a lot of reasons.

As someone who speaks constantly, I had to learn to be content to just listen to the excited chatter of those around me since I had no voice to contribute my own excited words. Even cheering and letting out a little "woohoo!" at our arrival to the Mission House was impossible. But I knew in my heart that only the Lord need to be made known of my excitement, and I was thankful the Lord knew how happy I was even though I could not express it in any other form besides a smile. My vocal chords didn't even work for laughing. I had sat next to a kid from Germany on our flight from Houston to Managua and the Flight Attendants couldn't make out anything I was attempting to express when she asked what I would like to drink. The German kid figured out I wanted orange juice and communicated that for me. And I was thankful. Fully aware that the Lord would use me as his hands and feet and I didn't need a voice anyways.

Anyways, Sunday morning arrived and we put on our village clothes, drank our coffees, and prepared to leave. Two years ago in Nicaragua I had made friends with a translator who has kept up with me on facebook ever since. A month ago I had asked him if there was fresh Guava in Nicaragua. Due to his busy schedule he was slow to replying. But I was overwhelmed with joy when he showed up at the mission house Sunday morning. I was going to set my breakfast plate on a table when I heard, "Miss Kohl! I have a present or you." I turned to see Jarib who went into the kitchen and came out with a round, green fruit lookin' object in a plastic bag. He had brought me  a guava. He wasn't able to go on our trip with us this year because of his studies at the university, but I was so touched that he came to bring me a guava in the 10 minutes he had to see us before leaving to church.

And just like that, I accepted the guava and he left without saying goodbye.

We met with our translators, most of whom we know from previous trips and felt like only a day or two had passed since we'd seen them last. They sat with us for breakfast and we asked after their lives, their families, their children. I still didn't have much of a voice, but I let those around me ask the questions and I smiled at the joy of it.

Around 8:30am we were on the bus, headed to our village: Pueblo Nuevo. I sat by one of our team pastors and the drive was very easy. The road was paved the whole way and the landscape was beautiful! We arrived to the village around 11:30am and began unloading the trucks right away. We arrived in two buses and two large trucks, a little smaller than a full semi. We began unloading the trucks of our food, our beds, water, and everything else.

It was about 98F and I was pretty off balance since my ears were still not cleared and my head pressure was intense and I was shivering from all of the bus windows being open. When I went to make my bed and lay down a little, two of my teammates were in our classroom building making their beds. When they saw me walk in they immediately asked if I was 'OK' and when I told them I was slightly woozy and needed to lie down they dropped all they were doing with their own beds and set to work on mine. They wiped down as much of the dirt off of it as possible and added a little plastic cover that they had brought before placing my sheets on for me. That is how my team is. Everyone is forever looking out for everyone else. Everyone cares for everyone else and will drop everything to make sure everyone is ok. I rested briefly before heading to the main tent to put together bags of rice and beans for the families we would see. Around 3pm we did our first service and began seeing our first round of patients.

My friend Jessica and I were assigned to work in the Dental Clinic. I was a little afraid of that at first since neither of us handle blood very well and I knew we would see plenty of that. We had several patients that first day and were at work until 5pm at least. I don't remember it very well as the days began to blend together. But we did have a very young patient, not more than 6 years old probably, who was so afraid at the pain and everything else that she had to be held down by 5 people. The screaming and wailing from the child could be heard from just about anywhere in the compound and it instilled a good amount of fear in our future young patients.

My job mostly consisted of me holding a flashlight while the tooth extraction surgery took place and then washing the tools after the surgery and discarding the used needles. Our training was brief, but it was all we needed. The most difficult part was getting the needles off of the syringe without getting poked by them. We had two dentists, one from Nicaragua and one from the U.S. Between the two of them we performed 122 surgeries in 4 days with over 130 teeth pulled. 

Another Adventure Begins!

Wouldn't it just be jolly well of me to send you all letters directing you to read my blog and then never blog?? Bless.. I had many intentions, I promised. I drafted 7 blogs in total, think. But never quite found the time to edit them and post them. It's not that I'm never home.. its just that I spend so much time on a computer at work that when I'm home, I'm rather content to just sit in silence by my fireplace with my ukulele for company.

Anyways.. Let me update you as I promised. Like every other troubled, irresponsible youth of our day, I am last minute packing the night before the first bit of my journey. I rather hope I don't forget anything. It would be such a trouble if I did. 

We were informed not long ago that we will be in Pueblo Nuevo.. which means, 'New Town' to the extent of my Spanish knowledge, I could be wrong. I have included a map for your enjoyment. As you can see, we shall be in rather a tropical location this time 'round and it will actually only be about 2 hours or so out of Managua.

Rumor has it that there was a bit of a trouble getting the local village to surrender their school for the entire week, so we have accepted 3 buildings that will most likely act as the kitchen, a dentistry, and a room for us ladies to sleep. The men shall just have to sleep their selves outside with our pharmacy supplies.

I'm not entirely sure how that shall look, but it shall be an adventure. I am bring a mosquito net and a hammock and am feeling like it might be rather well to sleep out under the stars. But perhaps my being a lady might hinder the wisdom of such a venture and I may just accept sleeping under my tin roof. 

As far as support was going, which the Lord is so funny this way, it was just today around noon that I was asked after the state of my support, it was then that I was just a handful of dollars short, by my calculations. And it was at 9:28pm this evening that I happened to encounter someone who had been wanting to support my trip and was handed a check which put the little cherry on top the cake.
How blessed I am!! I am so loved. The Lord loves me well through all of you.

I know not everyone who reads this blog was a recipient of my support letter this year, but, if you read this blog, you know that one of my main (And probably selfish) reasons for this trip is because I really just need a week with Jesus.

This is as fancy a vacation as I could ever want, no electricity or running water, no roof over our head or much floor under our feet. No electricity or warm water for showers, no phones, no internet.

But you really don't need any of those things.

The most wonderful thing is that every day you awake with the same purpose: Being loved by God and sharing that love with everyone around you.

It's the most richest thing anyone could ever experience. It makes you to feel like the wealthiest  human being to ever grace the planet. Who gets to say they showered under the stars and rode a horse over an exploded volcano? But loving Jesus means Jesus invites you on grand adventures.

Loving Jesus is the grandest adventure! Truly. And I'm off to go tell that to people who won't be able to understand a word I say. :)

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."