Nicaragua, a trip of a lifetime - Day 1-3

                
          
                     

                                                     

          

It is so surreal that I am sitting in 25 degrees weather right now, with palm trees right outside our house! We have just completed 3 days of traveling to Nicaragua and have made it all the way to Los Angeles. Me, along with three other young adults who are also doing this year long internship through the Youth Farm Bible Camp, started off our trip with driving all the way from Rosthern Saskatchewan to Idaho USA on our first day. Day two of our trip, we drove through Utah, and stopped to hike parts of Zion National Park, which was just breathtaking to see! We than drove into Las Vegas, where we toured the Vegas strip and slept for the night, before heading out to Los Angeles to spend the next day at the ocean and touring around before we fly out to Nicaragua! 


It still seems like a dream that we are actually on this trip, and to be honest it has kind of been a blur. So much has happened and in so little time already that it is hard to wrap my head around what is actually happening. Culture shock is real though, and even though it has been great to see the different cultures and parts of the world, it is very hard to adjust to being a part of it and comprehending the fact that we are not in Canada anymore and life is very different here. The trip to Vegas is when the culture shock really started to hit me. Just seeing the kind of lifestyle people live down there, the brokenness, and how overwhelming being in a huge city is, really reminded me that I am not in my safe bubble back at home, but vulnerable in a whole new part of the world. 


I have no idea what to expect in Nicaragua or what life will be like in a third world country, where people are suffering in many ways we can never understand. How much am I going to be able to communicate and form relationships with the people there without being able to speak hardly any Spanish? Right now, staying in LA just feels like we are on vacation, but tomorrow night is when reality will hit, and we will be flying towards a country full of uncertainty and way out of my comfort zone. Trusting in God and having peace in knowing this is all a part of His plan for me is the thing keeping me going, walking blindly into each day, knowing He is using this experience to shape and strengthen, even if I do not know why yet. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Holy Land

Image
  A cool breeze gently blowing through my hair, the gentle rock of the boat, the beautiful sunset over the horizon, and the glowing lights all around us beaming off of the cities on the hills. I couldn't put it to words, but the peace that came over me as our boat sat on the sea of Galilee, the same sea where Jesus was on, and it was like I could feel Him there, just as if he was sitting on that boat with us.  Its hard to even begin to explain what it was like to spend 10 days walking through the same places that Jesus did and being in the land where the bible came alive! It was one of the most beautiful, chaotic, calming, exciting places I have ever been too, and without a doubt I would go back in a heartbeat! No matter where we are, we can always feel God, but there is something different about being in His land, where Jesus lived and breathed and died, and I cannot explain the feeling, but it made the whole bible come to life, and in a sense it made my faith more real, being abl
Read more

A Mustard Seed Faith

Image
Sometimes the most honest prayers we can pray are the ones that sound like "This is hard. I'm scared. Please help" The one thing I knew I wanted to take back as a souvenier from my Israel trip were mustard seeds, to have out as a reminder of what Jesus teaches us about having faith the size of a mustard seed. If you haven't seen a mustard seed, they are so small, you can hardly see just one single seed if it was in your hand. In the bible, Jesus teaches that if we have faith even as small as a mustard seed, we can move mountains, and it will grow just like a mustard seed will, one tiny seed if planted will grow into something so much bigger. Even with such a small amount of faith, we can do so much more then we can imagine, and that is all we need for Jesus to do the work in us and flourish that faith!  I have never understood that illustration more then the past couple of months. When my health started going off the edge and it went from living in pain everyday, to l
Read more

Nicaragua, a trip of a lifetime - Week 2

Image
             Miriam Adeney says that “ You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That's the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place”. I can not agree more with this statement, and I can see it becoming more relevant the more places I go to. A piece of my heart lies in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and now Nicaragua, and the longer I am here for, the more I feel at home and attached to the people. I guess that is why they say its a price you pay for loving and knowing people, because it sure does not feel good to have to say goodbye, not knowing when you will ever see them again, always having a piece of you that longs to go back. This week, we moved into a little village house to become immersed into their everyday life and learn how to live the way they do. This was a huge step for me, throwing me way out of my comfort zone, putting yourself into a survival mode, doing everything you can
Read more