My heart and my body in two different places

People always say that your first mission trip is life-changing and you always compare every trip after that to your first experience. I have been blessed enough to go on an amazing trip to Costa Rica for my first trip and then to Nicaragua for my second.

I started off my Nicaraguan trip telling Lindsay that I didn’t feel like God had given me a heart for spanish-speaking countries and how I would like to go to Vietnam or Africa next year. Two days into the trip, God had completely changed my heart. He gave me a love for these people like I never could have imagined. Just thinking about the Nicaraguan people as a whole, puts a smile on my face. They make everything about the city of Managua seem beautiful. I have a desire for nothing more than to serve them with everything that I have in me.

The beautiful children come to you with a smile that reaches their eyes and arms ready for a long embrace. They are so desperate for love and so eager to return it 10-fold. Karla and Gabriel especially touched my heart. They have the biggest smiles and hearts that I have ever seen. Their need for love was so clear in their every action. Both of them came to say goodbye on our last day of clinic and my heart could have exploded with the love and sadness I felt as I embraced each child as they clung to me. It makes me sad but determined when I think about what they have to go back to.

I pray that in times when they feel they have no hope they can remember the week we spent together and know that there is. I pray they could know the difference they have made in our lives and how I wish I could take all of their burdens as my own. Mostly I pray that one day they are able to realize that they have a heavenly father who can and is willing to do just that.

 

Saying goodbye to Gabriel and Karla