Spring break 2010 – Nicaragua

***Jessie here.  Ok, so, if you’re new here to the blog, the meaning of Nothing Gets Crossed Out – in addition to never getting anything crossed off my to-do lists – is that we tackle a number of subjects: never crossing anything out of potential topics.  I mean, where else can you go to read about crazy children, a music festival, an art show, and a missions trip all within a week?  Yeah, I don’t know either!  AND, I can’t forget to mention the occasional quilting project gets covered, too, much to your relief, knowledge and enjoyment, no doubt.  You are so welcome!

My brother Jacob has been great about writing about his experiences traveling to Nicaragua on missions trips over the years, so when he went earlier this year, of course I wanted a recap that I could share with you!  Well, as many of you know, Jacob is an insanely busy engineering student at Iowa State University now working on his masters degree while also working as a Research Assistant.  So, now that summer is upon us and he only is taking one class, he just now completed his recap (rolls eyes).  Just kidding, Jacob!  We’re always glad when you contribute!!  Without further ado…

Oh wait, I lied… one more note: the incredible photos in this entry were inserted by me and don’t necessarily correspond with Jacob’s text directly before or after.  They were taken by a member of his team (credit given at the end) and were too good not to share as many as possible.  Don’t try to make too much sense out of where they appear in the post.  Now you may proceed…***

Hey ngco readers, it’s Jessie’s oldest and wisest (and only) brother, Jacob.  I know there are several who have been patiently waiting to read about my latest trip to Nicaragua.  You can check out previous entries about my trips by going here.  Over spring break (March 12-19), a team from Harvest Vineyard Church in Ames traveled to serve at the Brazos de Amor (Arms of Love) orphanage in Jinotepe, Nicaragua.  I think there were 23 of us that went.  Harvest Vineyard has been serving at this orphanage on an annual basis for the past several years.  I would say about half of the team had been on this trip at least once.  The team was mostly college-aged kids with two or three super-cool moms and a bilingual air traffic controller thrown in for good measure.

 

How do you get 23 individuals to Nicaragua?  I’m glad you asked.  The answer to this question is where our adventure begins.  We like to have people commit to the trip at the beginning of December so that flight arrangements can be made and people can fundraise their support with plenty of time in advance.  The main goal is to keep the team intact while we travel on two or three or four planes to get to Managua.  Travel stress increases with the number of travelers times the number of flight segments.  It’s science.  To prepare for the trip, the team met periodically from December to March to meet each other, share fellowship, and pray.  It’s always nice to learn some names prior to spending a week together in very remote regions of a foreign land.  It was at one of these meetings a few weeks before departure that our leadership had discovered that they forgot to book a ticket for our worship leader! (me).  We also had two late additions to our roster, which made a trio of us with no way to get to Nicaragua.  Our travel agent was called upon to find us airline tickets with the rest of the group who were flying out of Des Moines.  Fail.  Instead, our trio had to fly out of Minneapolis with plans to rendezvous with the other group in Miami.  It’s confusing, but hang in there.  So now we are seven days from departure.  One of our leaders makes a final check of airfare receipts to make sure everyone has a ticket.  Lo and behold, the travel agent overlooked one of the gals.  The trio became a quartet.  If the mistake went unnoticed for a few more hours, then the airfare would have "taken off" (yes, that’s a pun) to lands of cost-prohibition.  Mission trips always have stories like this, or more commonly about people miraculously encountering the EXACT amount of money needed at the last minute to complete fundraising.  God always reinforces my trust in His provision through these trips.

Grandma Bev asked me to share a presentation on Nicaragua with her Lutheran Women’s Fellowship Circle.  To prepare for this presentation, I asked myself the obvious question- why do I go on these trips?  Because "I love Jesus" and "I am called to it" seemed too concise, I found it easier to start a list of reasons I don’t go on these trips.  I’ve grouped them into five categories:

(1) Righteousness.  I do not go because I think it makes me a better Christian…. whatever that means.  I do not believe the Lord will give me a bigger mansion in Heaven for serving the orphans and the impoverished.

(2) Reporter.  I do not go with the intention of telling you all about the great things I was doing.  Nor do I go so that my proud family can boast to their neighbors about the wonderful trips they have financially supported.  (They wouldn’t do that.)  If reporting was my motivation, I probably would have given you a trip summary three months ago.

(3) Requirement.  I do not go because I think I must.  These trips simply provide a wonderful opportunity to express the love of Christ through everything He has blessed me with.  It has been easy for me to identify God at work in this area of our world, and I consider it a privilege to jump alongside what He is doing.  My salvation doesn’t depend on it… which leads into 

(4) Reversing the order of salvation.  Our pastors, Josh Miller and Liam Conley, spoke about this the past couple months.  I don’t need to have all my stuff together, help 9 old ladies cross Duff Avenue, and go on 4 mission trips before I come to Christ for salvation.  I obviously have nothing to prove to the one who knows my heart.  Like Josh says, "You don’t clean off before you take a shower."  If you ask for salvation through Christ, then he will transform you.  Christ has changed my life, therefore I want to live a changed life.  And Liam stated a beautiful truth along the same lines, "God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called."  I go because I’ve been called to Nicaragua.  Finally,

(5) Receive love.  If the expectation to receive love would be my motivation, then I’m not expressing the God’s love of to those kids in Nicaragua.  Our Father doesn’t love us only when we love Him back.  No, He loves us recklessly.  I turn from Him with more regularity than my pride would allow me to admit, and He is ALWAYS there to listen, comfort, and pull me back.  He doesn’t listen because He thinks I’m right.  My parents didn’t listen to me as a child because they thought I was right.  They listened because they loved.  So is the Father’s love.  And thank God He loves us enough to answer prayer not according to our understanding, but according to His perfect wisdom.

This is me stepping off my soap box.  Anyway, the team all met in Miami which was nothing short of a miracle!  We arrived in Managua together after a long day of travel, but our luggage did not.  Not one of our bags.  People, when they tell you to pack a change of clothes in your carry on, please listen to them!  I only had a change of socks and underwear in mine.  Of course I was wearing jeans because I had to leave from Minneapolis in the middle of March.  After three days of running around in the Nicaraguan heat with my jeans and most disagreeable underwear, my luggage finally showed up.  I’ll chalk that one up as a learning experience. 

We got the opportunity to do so many fun activities with the kids.  As usual, the same kids are there that I have built relationships with over the years.  My personal favorite activity was the beach day on the Pacific Ocean.  The kids don’t live far from the beach, but they don’t get the chance to go that often either.  They don’t have swimsuits, but that doesn’t stop them!  I had an absolute blast playing in the water.  I got fried by the sun, but it was well worth it. 

We got the opportunity to visit the dump (see "Bienvenidos a La Chureca").  I have a lot of crazy stories about La Chureca.  At one point during this trip to the dump I thought, "This is the hottest I’ve ever been.  Ever."  Managua is a hot city, but La Chureca is even hotter.  La Chureca is always burning, smoking, or smoldering because it can get hot enough for trash to combust.  We did the usual tour and prayed for different people who make their living by sifting through trash.  In fact, we stopped at one home that I have visited on previous trips.  We prayed for the father of the house who was done working in the dump for the day.  You should have seen the hands on this guy.  It looked like he was wearing two catcher’s mitts.  My mind raced to think about all the things those hands have touched to support his family.  How many vile sacks of fill-in-the-blank has he had to sift through?  As we were gathering around him to pray, he began to speak about a vision God had given him a few weeks before our arrival.  Ultimately, the vision was about us coming to visit him, and God wanted him to pray for us.  He said that he became very angry with God because he didn’t want to pray for the rich gringos.  His truthfulness was refreshing.  In his obedience, as we were gathered around, he laid down his pride and raised those giant, powerful hands and prayed over us.  He prayed over us.  And pray he did.  He was drenched with sweat and tears there in the middle of Hell on Earth.  There have been few times that I have felt smaller before God.  Have you ever been so humbled that you want to fall facedown and lay as low and as flat as possible?  I would like to think I would have fallen prostrate had the ground not been covered with dog, pig, and chicken excrement.

Without question, one of the best parts about this trip was our team.  It quickly became clear that each person was there for a reason.  I don’t really know how to describe it.  I’ll give an example.  Our team did a big food outreach to a couple different community churches.  We fed people who didn’t know from where their next meal would be coming.  We gave away bags of rice, beans, and cooking oil to the heads of families.  First, we had to prepare each bag.  How many bags did we make?  I don’t know, 500?  We went over to Doug and Julie Effinger’s house, whom are permanent missionaries from Washington state, to prepare these bags.  They had done this sort of activity with previous groups, so they estimated it would take about six or seven hours.  We finished in one hour.  It was really strange.  Everyone just kind of knew what to do.  It probably didn’t hurt that there were like eight engineers on the team working to optimize production flow.  Our team was phenomenal.  At these food outreaches, we would tell the Nicaraguans where we were from and why we were there.  I would lead a worship song like "Abre Mis Ojos" ("Open the Eyes of My Heart").  We put on a mimed skit about the love of Christ.  We prayed for people who wanted prayer, whether it be for healing or salvation or anything.  Then, we put on a carnival for the kids complete with face painting, a cake walk, and balloon animals.  My carnie gig was usually playing the few Spanish songs I know for the cake walk.  Then I would usually try to break a few of the adolescent Nicaraguan corazones de las mujeres.  It is a big deal for the young girls if a tall North American boy will spend time to talk with them [in very broken Spanish].

We also got to do lots of activities at the orphanage like arts & crafts, endless soccer games, and we even had a big dance party.  Your humble narrator would not consider himself a dancer by any wildest stretch of the imagination, but I was cutting a rug that night, my friends.  Cutting a rug probably doesn’t aptly justify the "scene" that took place.  I mean we were soaked from head to toe with perspiration.  I was sore while sitting on the plane the next day.  I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t know if it will ever happen again.  I guess it was the Holy Spirit.  Nobody puts Baby in a corner.  Anyway, these trips have been a huge blessing in my life.  God always shows up in a different, powerful, and exciting way.  He is able to use us when we’re at our best, at our worst, at our most equipped, and at our least.

 
So one of my biggest thrills is watching others fall in love with serving in Nicaragua.  I asked some first-timers what they thought of the trip, and before I could finish the question I was interrupted with "I loved it!  I’m coming  back as soon as possible!"  Funny how the trip that began with the question of getting 23 people to Nicaragua concludes with the question of how to keep us from returning home.

*All photographs credited to Anjana Rao.  Anjana was one of the late additions to the team.  We were blessed to have her with us for much more than her photography service.  Photography is her livelihood, so I’d love to promote her through this blog.  Contact her at anjana.g.rao@gmail.com.  Thanks for the photos, Anj!