Day of traveling :(

So sad to be saying we left Managua early this morning.. but happy to say we had a very great flight to Atlanta and we are currently waiting for our connecting flight to Indy. We want to personally thank all of those at home who have been praying for us and our trip to go successfully. Our trip couldn't have been better. We had wonderful weather, the best company, and the greatest hospitality.
We met some of the greatest people in the world, filled with God's love and who truly had servant's hearts. We will miss everybody so much, but if we didn't come back home and share what we have learned, what would the trip really be for? Personal gratification?
God wants us to learn from our trip and bring home to Indiana with us. The thing that we learned the most and want to immitate most is God's love. The people we worked with had so much love for us, yet we had just met them. They also had so much faith in the Lord, and they all were in very extreme cases of poverty. We have so much, all of us, back home. We have beautiful homes, shoes, clothes, and we never go hungry, yet we still think we need more, still worry about seemingly insignificant things. We are so richly blessed beyond words by God. He has provided us with so many talents and so many resources. They aren't ours. They are God's.
Our challenge for ourselves and for you all at home that have kept up with our blog and our trip is to think about all that God has truly blessed you with. Give thanks to Him and listen to the calling He has for your life and what He wants you to do with those riches He has blessed you with. We are all called to love like Jesus. What does that really mean and more importantly what does that really look like?
The sense of community the people of Nicaragua possess is unreal, unlike any other that we have been a part of before. Nobody cared about what clothes we were wearing, how our hair or makeup looked, if we smelled or not, what shoes we were wearing. Our personalities and hearts were what they were most concerned about. We were offered the best seats in the house, offered the best things they could give us. They wanted us to know how appreciative they were that we were there helping, building, working along side of them. A overturned bucket might have been the best chair in the house, but it was always offered to one of us. A homemade ring or bracelet might have been the best gift they could have given us, and it was offered to us. Remembe what you have to share, what you have to offer somebody, even a stranger?
Where has our sense of community gone to? Why are we so close off, so private, so uninviting to people we do not know? Aren't we all children of God?

Thanks again for all the support and prayers. We love you and are excited to share our stories, our pictures, and our changed hearts with you.
With much love and many blessings,
Your Northview West Lafayette Nicaragua Go Team :)

Stay tuned for pictures :)

Sunday... Fun day to wrap up the week!

Sunday-- July 1, 2012

Man, has the week sure flown by :( I have been having so much fun writing and keeping everybody up with what we are doing back home with this blog! I am so sad to be writing the last blog I will be posting here in Nicaragua. What an amazing, awe inspiring experience it has been for me personally and the entire team.

Today we had another great breakfast and an awesome devotional team! We worshiped and praised God with some songs this morning. We also went around the circle and told what we would miss most about Nicaragua and what we are looking forward to most going back home. It got very emotional this morning. Everybody shed a few tears or at least got tears in their eyes as we went through what we would miss. We have really made such wonderful relationships with the people we have worked with.
We prayed as a group for the many new friends we made along with the college students we met last night. We prayed for a very special little boy named Nathaniel that goes to one of the schools that NRN works with. He is a 7th grader and is having surgery on a large mass in his cheek this Tuesday. Please keep him in your prayers!

We had our free day today and we loaded lunches onto the bus and headed to the largest outdoor market in Central America in Granada. We had so much fun buying things and spending time with our translators Aaron and Juan Carlos. We then road up to the top of the mountain to look over onto Lake Nicaragua! We even got to see the Volcano! We dealt with lots of rain today, but it didn't dampen our spirits. We had many laughing episodes on the bus rides, and we even ended up eating lunch on the bus due to the rain! We still had a wonderful time though. We headed down to Granada into the city square and toured a Cathedral there that is very well known. Granada was very beautiful. We even got to take a boat ride to look at many of the islands that have been formed by the volcano! We saw monkey island and the whole day was just a lot of fun.
We had dinner all together as team with Henry, our bus driver, and Aaron and Juan Carlos. We just had a wonderful fun filled day strengthening our relationships and laughing together. Bus rides were filled with laughter and singing!
Tomorrow will be a long day! We have to leave the La Quinta by 4:30! Thank you for all the prayers! God has been present every day here and has been moving in all of our hearts! I will post once we get to Atlanta! Please keep checking the blog for pictures of our amazing trip!!
Love you all and sending love to all our Nicaragua friends as we leave them tomorrow!!