Trip to Nicaragua

We got home yesterday from a ministry trip to Nicaragua. We trust we ministered to the pastors and their wives who attended. I know they ministered to me. In fact, the overall effect may be one of the most transforming in my spiritual walk in a long time. The accumulation of what has been going on in my personal life, blending with what is going on in the lives of these precious ladies, bathed in prayer and time in the Word.

Some people have the blessing of having a small group of Christian friends with whom they consistently spend time, sharing their hearts and love for the Lord, challenging each other, crying with each other, laughing with each other. It is not something that I have had the privilege of enjoying on a regular basis and something some of these ladies never have.

We were supposed to have shared the teaching with Abel and Betty Reyes, a very special Honduran couple. Problems with Betty's papers (very long story) stopped them at the border, so we had to go on alone. Betty was supposed to have done more than half the teaching and teach the ladies one of the crafts we were going to do, so I really wondered how things were going to go without her. As it turned out, the time seemed to fly. I would look up in surprise to see that the men were already out of their class, ready for break time, and we were still going strong.

There are a lot of stories I could tell (and probably will in another blog). On our last day together, I was sharing a lesson on worry. (The same lesson, more or less, that I had shared in my "missing-button-radio appearance" the week before.) I was talking about the reasons that a person might be plagued by a tendency to worry and mentioned that sometimes some kind of trauma or abuse that a person experiences as a child tends to cause her to approach life with fear, to shut down emotionally in self defense. Immediately, I saw several faces blanch in reaction, eyes fill with tears, heads lower as though busily studying their notes. We talked about Philippians 4:6-7, and the peace that results when we take our needs to the Lord. It was a precious moment.