During Spring Break, I got the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Nicaragua through my church. It was a 7-day trip, Saturday to Friday. I never really knew how big God was until this trip.
Early Saturday morning, we all met up at the church to go to the airport. This was my first ever flight, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little bit nervous. There was a guy who was sitting next to me who was a missions pastor for a church right next to ours. He was also going on a mission trip, but to Japan. It was so cool that even though we were going to different places, God was sending people to work all over the world.
Once we got to Nicaragua, we stayed in a place outside of Managua, which we called “the farm.” We stayed with two missionaries who have lived in Nicaragua since 1991. They’ve created schools and helped families all over Nicaragua.
The next morning, we got up bright and early to go to Sunday school at one of the local schools. We prayed, and when we worshiped, the locals sang songs that we knew, but in Spanish. It was amazing to just see that we are saying the same words and worshiping the same God, just differently. When the sermon started, all the little kids got to leave and play games, so we left with them. We played duck, duck, goose, and a bunch of other games with them.
We then had lunch at the church, during which I got to learn a local girl’s story. She’s 22 years old, is a single mom of the cutest toddler, and she’s a teacher at one of the schools. I also learned that the kid who was helping us with the little kids earlier was born with his brain swollen. The doctors thought he would never talk, never walk, and yet he was the one leading them in song and dancing. I would have never known that he had complications when he was little, because he’s perfectly fine now.
Monday, we got to help at a different school. As soon as we got out of the truck, the kids came and hugged us. We got to do summer camp activities and stations with the kids. When doing my station, I was helping the kids create pipe cleaner flowers, and the one thing I noticed was that they would hold up their flowers to me to show how well they did. I think that’s because they wanted to be noticed. I also got to help them play with a parachute. I couldn’t remember how to say up or down in Spanish, but they had as much fun as I did when I was little and playing with the parachute. We got lots of hugs that day.
We went back to that same school the next day, and we got to
help with different grade levels with the same activities. I was able to share my testimony with some kids and helped lead a Bible lesson and connect my message with growing and planting plants to the pipe cleaner flowers we made. Unfortunately, this was the last day we had with the school, and we played their whole recess with them. Even though we didn’t speak the same language, we still all connected.
We got to visit two churches and do the same activities. Both churches absolutely loved all the things we did with them. Then we went to a church service. The girl, who was helping us translate, asked if I wanted to help sing. So I said yes. She sang a few songs, and then our youth pastor preached a sermon. After I got to sing with her. We sang a song called ‘House of the Lord’ by Phil Wickham. She sang in Spanish, and I sang in English. And wow, was that probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. But to also see all the people from Nicaragua sing and all the people from my church sing, both in different languages, but we are all worshiping and were here for the same reason. It was absolutely so beautiful.
We got to have a tourist day the next day, and even though we weren’t actively helping people, I still saw God everywhere we went. It was so beautiful: the plants, the animals, the sea, the people.
On our last day, we headed to the airport to go through TSA. We had about an hour in the line, but forty minutes till boarding started. We just kept praying while in line that we would make it, and we did with ten minutes to spare. That was all God. There was absolutely no way that we should have made it, unless God was working. And that’s exactly what happened.
This trip taught me how big God really is. How much he worked in this one week alone was so big. We speak different languages, we live in two different countries, we have different lives and cultures, but we all still come together for one thing. And that was God.
