Waking up in Nicaragua

Today we woke at 5:45am, not because I had to per say but because the sun was shining through the window above my bunk and the roosters were telling us it was time to stir. With our morning orientation behind us and our mission in clear sight ahead of us, we boarded our trusty bus and drove 2 hours through some of the most beautiful hills I've ever seen. Rivas, Nicaragua will be our new "home" for the next 6 days and I am excited to meet the city and its people. It feels wonderful to be back and yet it also feels as though I never left.

As we drove from Managua to Rivas, the city of mangoes, it was still surreal to see the life differences between my home and their home. Rocks hold their roofs in place and dirt takes the places of carpet. And although the condition of the animals here is getting easier to see, my eyes are still drawn to them. I know in my heart that I need to get over it, after all how can they justify feeding dogs when they are struggling to feed their families? But again it just opens my eyes to how incredibly blessed we are in the states. We have such a plethora of resources that even our animals are well fed and sometimes over fed, and can even be dressed to the nines in doggie couture if the owner sees fit. The bottom line is that even a small difference such as the animals here make me feel incredibly blessed.

With less than 24 hours in, I can already tell that the Lord is at work in my heart and mind. Preparing yourself to have your life turned inside out with questioning what really matters, asking yourself if you're really, truly thankful for your blessings and what you're going to do with those blessings, and finally being stripped of almost all of your comforts even down to clean clothes is never going to be an easy way to spend a week. Yet as we stepped off of the bus in El Rosario and I saw the first 2 women who were there to greet us at the church where we'd hold our clinic, I knew in my heart that I was in the exact place I needed to be. Clean clothes or not.