God goes before us. | month two: nicaragua, we’re here.

Adios Guatemala, Hola Nicaragua.

Last week K Squad packed up our tents, and at 3:45 in the morning our hosts sent us off in true Guatemalan style: with a round of firecrackers. 24 hours and two border crossings later (quick hello’s to El Salvador and Honduras), we woke up in Granada, Nicaragua. We reunited with our “squad parents,” squad mentors, squad leaders and Gray Media—the hearts behind the World Race Documentary—and we all spent a few wonderful days together. We had a chance to process our first month on the Race, spend time with the Lord, worship, journal, meet with our mentors, be interviewed for the documentary, and get our minds and hearts geared up for month two.

For October, my team has been given a unique task, rather than heading to serve at a specific ministry, we have been asked to do something called “Unsung Hero’s.” We will spend the month traveling around Nicaragua in search of missionaries who are building the Kingdom in this country. Our job is to reach out to these ministries, look into the work they’re doing, and build relationships. The hope is that we can discover what God is already doing here in Nicaragua and how the World Race might be able to come alongside, potentially finding new places Racers could serve in the future.

Unsung Hero’s is an exciting opportunity. We get to see a lot of places. We get to discover. But when you think about it, it’s also a little daunting: here we are, dropped off in a country none of us have ever been to, living on a very miniscule budget, with no schedule, no specific instructions, and no direction.

But God promises that He will “go before us, and be with us.” I’ve never had a clearer sense of that promise being fulfilled than I do today. Truly, God has gone before my team here in Nicaragua.

A week ago in a Granada coffee shop, a woman peeked her head out at my teammate Taylor and said, “Are you with the World Race?”

The woman, Monica, knew a group of Racers were in town, and as we started talking with her, her amazing testimony began to unfold.

The first nine years of Monica’s marriage with her husband, Jaime, were dark and abusive: drugs, alcohol, violence. Her nine-year-old son wanted them to run away from home. Someone gave Monica the advice that if she just waited until her husband fell asleep, she could beat him over the head with something heavy and the pain could all be over. Numb, Monica contemplated. All the while, her neighbor continuously asked her, “Come to church with me? Come to church with me?”

Eventually, Monica said yes, and went to church. That day she heard about Jesus and how he died to rescue us from ourselves and give us hope and a new life—not just an entrance ticket to heaven, but a new life here on earth. She put her faith in Christ, and went home to the storm—but this time, she said, with peace in her heart.

The Holy Spirit had infiltrated her home, and Jaime felt God’s power. Six months later he surrendered his life to Jesus. Jaime and Monica have been married 26 years now and they have never looked back from the Lord.

What I hear in their story is that God truly wastes nothing. There is no part of our past that God can’t redeem, and use for our good. You know what ministry God called Monica and Jaime to? Battered women and children. And after that, the root of the problem: lost men.

Monica and Jaime began a discipleship school for men in Mexico. They touched hundreds of lives there and after putting the ministry into good hands, three months ago they followed the Lord’s call to move to Nicaragua to do the same: God has called them to build a discipleship school for men here in the wilderness of Granada. By January they are trusting the Lord will provide the funds to have the project going: a dorm for 25-50 men, a chapel, a retreat center, and more, all in the woods on the land the Lord has given them. Here, men will come into a 9-month program where they can be rehabilitated, disciplined, and discipled. They will live in community, work the land, learn a new trade, and be immersed in God’s Word as they’re taught about how to live life for Jesus.

When Monica and Jaime heard about what our team is doing, they graciously opened their home to us.

We showed up Friday morning on their doorstep with nothing but the packs on our backs, and they quickly brought us into their family. We’ve been doing life with them here the past few days, sharing stories, laughing, worshipping, meeting their neighbors, learning about their ministry, and helping them clear the land they are building on. They have provided amazing meals, comfortable beds, and restocked some of the simple supplies we were running out of, like soap and toothpaste.

God truly went before us in crossing our paths in the coffee shop that day. Yesterday, some of the team started getting sick: if we didn’t have this safe haven to rest and recover in, I honestly don’t know what we would have done.

God foresaw our needs. He knew before we did that we were going to get sick, and he graciously gave us these brothers and sisters to care for us.

What a beautiful image of the body of Christ caring for one another. I’m so thankful our God goes before us.

Until next time,

K

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Praise the Lord, I’m feeling healthy today! Please pray for health for our team as we feel the effects of colds, and possibly a flu bug.

Once we are all back on our feet, we will be hoping a bus, a ferry and a boat to reach out to ministries on Ometepe Island. After that, we’ve been asked to go east toward Matagalpa, where the Lord has graciously given us a mutual friend and point of contact through Vida Joven, aka Young Life in Matagalpa!

Wherever this month takes us, I trust God has already been there and will continue to meet all of our needs.

Thank you to everyone praying! All my love goes out to you.