Perceptions

Micheal and Lisa Perkins, the owners of the hostel, are literally spoiling us. We are, by far, the largest group they've ever hosted but they haven't missed a beat in hospitality. How wonderful a blessing they and their children are to us! They made us a wonderful breakfast with fresh squeezed juice from some exotic fruit and provided us with enough coffee to get our motors running on high speed.

Brian's wife, Rachel, arrived at 8:30 with her two youngest daughters and a slew of Managua church staff members. It was reunion time again for the folks from last year! But better yet, it was time to make new friends with the rest of our team. We all piled into Luis' bus and headed for the town of Leon.

Leon is situated north of Managua and is a lttile more laid back than it's sister to the south. After a rather bumpy ride on a not-so-well-maintained road, we arrived at the main church. From there, we branched out into teams of four to blanket the surrounding neighborhoods with fliers, inviting the locals to attend one of four churches in the area. Many of us had preconceived ideas of how this event would turn out. The concensus was that most people would either politely accept the flier and then throw it away or that they would merely turn away without eve accepting it. Boy, were we wrong. Here are some of the comments from the team members (as best as I can recall them):

   Kerri - "Luke, what's she saying?...She's asking you your name...Oh, it's Kerri." Then the little girl ran into the house yelling "Se llama KERRI! Se llama KERRI!" Then she came back out and asked Luke the same thing and he said "Lucas" and she ran back into the house yelling "Se llama Lucas! Se llame Lucas!" She was so excited to know us!

Yami interpreting Don (aka Pastor) Rudolfo's directions for the team

  Aaron - I was walking with one of the guys from the Managua church but we couldn't speak each others language at all. He pointed for me to go down an alley to pass out the fliers but it looked kinda rough. But I went anyway cause I trusted this guy. When I got to the end, there were some pretty big guys behind the last door. I said "Hola" and they gave me a great big smile and said "Hola" right back to me. Pretty cool!

Mundo, Madi Luke and Aaron before heading to Leon

  Laura - I loved watching the interaction between Erika and one of the older ladies to whom she gave a flier.  Erika used some of her spanish and the lady just kept praising God for Erika and what she was doing!

There were so many comments that a better idea would be to ask your son or daughter about them when they get home. As a team we discussed the days events after a delicious supper and the conversation lasted over an hour. The general theme was that when we're put outside our comfort zone (us in a foreign country and our Nicaraguan church friends having to go to stranger's homes to invite them to church) we form a team with the Holy Spirit working through all of us. He gave us all courage to shine hope into the lives of complete strangers and in turn, we were blessed by their gracious acceptance of our gift of an invite to meet Christ.

Luggage update...the airline found our five bags (not six as previously reported) but we won't get them until tomorrow. In the meantime, everybody has graciously offered to help clothe those that are in need. The team is really starting to gel. Amen.

In Him,
Clif