Hearts bound for Nicaragua

Yesterday we had our first official "work day" for our Nicaragua VBS team! We've been meeting, planning, and praying for several months now but today we started to truly begin to "see" what we are going to be doing with the children of Emmanuel, the barrios (village) we will be serving in. When I was in Nicaragua back in September, Emmanuel was the very first barrios that the planning team visited. That place captured our hearts from the start. The kids were glued to us and we were glued to them. Many of them had never seen themselves before so the cameras started flashing and kids began to see pictures of themselves for the first time. Their smiles were larger than life! This barrios was extremely muddy and there were so many children without shoes and clothes. Emmanuel is one of the poorest villages in Managua and fairly newly established. It has only been where it is for 2 years. When we visited villages that were 5, 7, and even 10 years old you could definitely see the difference. Some of the pix below show the team visiting Emmanuel when we were there in '07. Bruce and the guys helped several ladies at the water pump fill their buckets. It was amazing that the people in the barrios came from all over just to simply get water from this pump. In the picture I lost my sunglasses to the young girl in the green skirt. She tried them on and I never got them back. She thought she was so "cool" with them on.

I'm so proud of our VBS team and how they are already allowing God to prepare their hearts for this trip. 90% of our team of 47 has never been out of the country (including adults)! It is already proven to be such a faith journey for many. Every time I have traveled overseas I pray and ask the Lord to give me a scripture for my personal promise and encouragement. It's interesting what the Lord clearly gave me for this upcoming trip. Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly BEYOND all that we ask or think, according to HIS power." I fully believe that the Lord not only gave this as a prayer to my own heart but a prayer for me to pray over EVERY single person on our team! I'm believing God will show UP and show OUT to every single person in such a personal way! Below are some pix from the work day yesterday! It's so neat to watch the unity of our VBS team come together now that we are really at the stage of "preparing." There were such sweet spirits in amongst the kids as they worked yesterday as well as when they left and carried the buckets with work needed to still be done home with them!Stay tuned....I'll keep updating with Nicaragua information. For now, we leave on July 12th....continue to pray that God will "shower his favor" on each individual heart whether it's a financial, health, or spiritual need!