Thursday, March 7, 2013

Ministering in the City of Managua



Today was a busy day, full of three church services! We left around 6:45 am after eating breakfast with Missionary Eric Ferguson at our camp.

We arrived at Hosanna Masaya church where we participated at two back-to-back services. The church services began with their own worship team--very talented and similar to our U.S. style of worship.

After worship, we introduced ourselves, presented human videos and then Brittany and Emilee shared their testimonies followed by Macy worshiping through dance. After the dance, Amy shared the Word of God and our interpreter, Pastor Moises translated. Altar calls are very popular here so after almost every service, we had the opportunity to pray with people. It was a very humbling and powerful experience.

Following the service, the pastor of Hosanna Masaya kindly prepared us pastries and drinks for us. We got to relax a little before the next service. Pastor Eric and his wife Shana got us food very similar to KFC (you would think we were still in the States) and then several of us go on the bed of his truck and rode back to our camp (having the ride of our lives on a 45-minute bumpy drive) while the rest of the team went back on the bus.

Our last service was at the church were our other translator, Pastor Abdias, was pastoring at. We immediately connected with the children there. We climbed trees, held the children on our shoulders, they taught us Spanish words, took pictures and even chased (and got chased) by a cow! Kiersten, as she ran from the tied cow, tripped and met the curb face-to-face. Luckily with no injuries!

We did the same program at this church. However, only 25+ people showed up (compared to the typical crows of 180-250 people we had experienced prior to this location). Even though it was such a small group of people, it was awesome! Simon gave the Word and after, because there were so little people, we were able to connect and love the children after the service with balloons and face painting. Some of us got our faces, hands and arms painted by the children as well.

That evening, our team went to our first Nicaraguan dinner at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant were we had beef, pork and chicken tacos and they were 'muy buenos'. After our meal, we went back to camp to sleep after a very long day. You would think that the fun ended there, but when we got back to the camp, our bus driver Rudy gave Tyler and Dave a quick crash course on how to drive and maneuver the bus in the parking lot. Today was a crazy day!

- Emilee Slingerland and Brittany Cali

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