I’m Still Here .. . What’s Up with me in Nica?!?!

 

As we begin the new fiscal year in my ministry here at REAP Granada and the Nicaragua AIM base, I think I owe my supporters and followers an update.  I know, in fact, that this update is much overdue and it would be difficult to summarize all of the personal and ministry changes that have taken place since my last official blog update (over 1 year ago).

 

So I’ve decided to start afresh and update you on me, my role in the ministry here, and how that all fits together right now.  I’m going to try to highlight things but I apologize upfront for the length. The following monthly updates, which are my NEW goal, will be shorter 🙂

 

I started the year off by getting married on January 12th to amazing man, Guillermo Jose Garay Ruiz, whose support is vital to my ministry efforts and became a mother to a 14 year old son, Michael, at the same time.  It was such a beautiful time of celebration for my existing immediate family and our new members.

 

I am working through the unique challenges and blessings of intercultural marriage and motherhood on the mission field on a daily basis.  Though many days are hard it is remarkable to see how God shows up and I am able to experience Him in ways I never would otherwise.  He is doing amazing things to strengthen our family and use us for His glory where he has us.  We give him all the gory and are excited for what all he has for us in the coming months.

 

We are coming off of a busy year logistically for REAP Granada in FY 2018 where we hosted 27 individuals and 15 teams and a 100+ person 4 day Parent Vision Trip.  But we made many awesome connections, learned many valuable lessons, and our ministry benefited greatly from these efforts.  I feel ramped up for receiving more than double (no joke) this number of people to partner with our ministry this coming year!  As you know, logistics is a “green light” for me so I’m excited for the challenge and all the benefit that this can bring for our ministry and those we are able to serve.

 

My main ministry focus areas with REAP continue to be the women’s ministry and working with the Pantanal library.  

 

I am currently working with 3 weekly bible studies  with different groups of women from the barrios that we serve, one of those solely connected through the sports program connection.  This number of studies fluctuates as the number of sports teams fluctuates that want to commit to discipleship and is a little lower right now as we are between seasons, but we expect it to pick up again soon.  We are working and seeking God’s direction through prayer to raise up leadership to help with facilitation of these groups so that we can stay focused on a smaller number of groups like this and really invest in those women and that material.  I’m personally seeing this come to pass in one of the studies that I’m involved in and it is so remarkable to see God provide that opportunity for a local to serve and for our ministry to be strengthened and expanded through it.  I’m personally very excited about the Beauty for Ashes follow-up material that we are having a chance to go through with out Thursday night women’s study since most of these women attended the “Beauty for Ashes” conference that we hosted for Adventures in Missions here last March.  This is material and an effort that I’m very passionate about and It is a beautiful experience to be able to delve deeper into this material with the ladies that we’ve come to build relationship with and love.  I also continue to be involved in the women’s ministry at the local jail and am delighted to report that locals work with us and take the lead on this weekly and we are merely the support to this ministry effort at this point.

The library ministry is going well.  I began volunteering at the library in a general fashion over a year ago.  However I stepped into a more defined role by starting a Saturday morning Book Club on Saturday mornings in January. Thanks to a donation of the full “Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series” as a Christmas project, so I made that our first effort.  We read through the first two books (takes us about 3 months per book) and then those that participated were gifted a “diary” labeled with their name on the final day and the full series was donated to the library for them to continue reading.  Now that I‘ve got them keeping up with their notebooks (responsibility), answering follow-up questions at home (comprehension), reading aloud (confidence building), listening to each other (respect) and excited about books we’ve moved along to a series of more substance and biblical symmetry.  We started the “Magician’s Nephew”, which is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series 2 weeks ago and are receiving great response.  I’m so excited for how the core group of participants will be affected by this book club in the long run.  I still continue basic volunteer hours as my schedule permits because literacy and a love for learning that books can inspire can change a life.  ***Please pray that my efforts at the library continue to foster connections with the mothers of the children participating as I have one success story of this so far just in the past couple of months.  God is good!@

 

I promise to keep these more frequent and thus shorter moving forward.

 

A few praises and prayer requests to close on:

1. PRAISE:  I raised 100% of my support goal for Adventures in Missions for FY2017 so I’m starting out FY 2018 with a clean slate.

2. PRAYER REQUEST:  I could still use a few more monthly financial supporters so if you have an interest in monthly partnership or making a one-time donation towards my efforts here, please contact me at [email protected] for more information.

3. PRAISE & PRAYER:  Spanish language learning is continuing to improve but needs to continue to improve.  I’m currently working the Rosetta Stone program in cooperation with my real life practice here.

4. PRAYER REQUEST: for my family as we continue to adjust as our new roles as unique intercultural family on the mission field

5. PRAYER REQUEST: that I will continue to seek God’s direction daily for my roles in the women’s ministries and the library ministry and act in obedience to God’s direction only.