for You are good, and your love endures forever...

March 22nd 2010

Home again!
….but only for a week. The DTS has just returned from an 8 day mini-outreach in Diriamba, Nicaragua. This is where YWAM Nicaragua is located. It was an incredible trial run of the full and upcoming months of solid outreach. The team showed incredible growth and initiative in leadership and stepping out in faith to minister to and love on the people this last week. It was so cool for me to return here exactly a year later and see some familiar faces. I was able to visit with Karen, a girl my age I had met 2 years earlier in my DTS… then, she had a 3 year old son, Israel, and now also little Rachel. I ran into her mom on the street earlier in the week when we were out for a prayer walk and remembering her name, called out to her. She was excited to see me and couldn’t believe I could remember her name… she started telling me she still has the bible one of my friends gave her when we visited her house 2 years ago, and that I had to come by the house and see Karen her daughter and her granddaughter. I am excited to go back the first week of May to see them. It was a crazy long week, but so full of testimonies of God’s goodness and power. It was such a privilege to see and walk out alongside these passionate, excited, loving students… seeing God at work in them, through them….watching see Him developing their gifts, their faith, and their love for Him.
The boys slept in the church in the Barrio outside the base and the girls in the Biblioteca a little further into the town. It was really awesome living so close to the people…we were really able to form friendships in the short time we had. There is something so warm about Nicaraguans that makes it really easy to smile and begin sharing… even walking down the street people easily make eye contact and smile back at you. Even in something as simple as smiling, I could feel the love of God overflowing in me and walking down the street felt as though it had a greater purpose.

1 John 4:7 "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God."

so then.. let us press on to know the Lord, and know His love, so that as we choose to walk in love, it would be with His love that we love one another... what power, what impact, what transformation could take place as we surrender thought to our own reputations, and love as He calls us... with His pure, steadfast, sacrifical, whole, limitless, conditionless love. be blessed brothers and sisters,
xo j