When waking up to a beautiful sunrise and birds chirping, our day was already set up for success. After making some of the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to ever be created, our team enjoyed breakfast and hopped on to the bus to head to day 2 of our VBS at Club Esperanza. Our task for today was one word: JOY! We had been praying to impact the children of the club by providing them with a day for fun and music and bible stories and leave them feeling like they could do anything with God. The bible team inspired, the art team created, the drama team imagined, the music team belted, and the sports team GOOAAALLed. As we were on the music team, we got even the shyest kids up on their feet dancing and singing. We decided to use the kid’s love of music and making noise to tell the story of marching around the walls of Jericho. We ran (sometimes interrupting the other groups…whoops) all around the club singing and yelling and drumming as loud as we could. The kids loved it and we were grateful to tie in a very important bible story despite all of the panting and sweating. Along with all of our dancing and singing, we were joined by two incredibly talented boys named Miguel and Yosmal. Miguel saw the ukulele as soon as we walked in and ran home to get his neighbor’s guitar and bring it back to play. While this was happening, Yosmal grabbed the ukulele and started playing beautiful arrangements with the ukulele upside down! They both had an insane amount of talent which brought some of us (Emma) to tears and motivated us to sing even louder shouting  our praises to God.

After saying “Hasta mañana” to los niños y niñas (and eating the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to ever be created), we got to the back breaking part of our day. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have not mixed concrete, say a thankful prayer to God right now. Even with all 23 of us, it took all of our strength and energy. But the pay off was worth it when we saw the smooth, complete sidewalk.* We were even able to leave our mark in the wet cement thanks to Taylor’s lovely handwriting.

Once home after a bus ride jam packed with singing and rap battling, we cooled off in the pool and had delicious spaghetti for dinner. We had the privilege of then going into the wonderful home of the Farrington’s for worship and devo on their 3rd floor/roof where we were greeted by the Nicaragua winds, a full moon, and a full stomach from the brownies little Juliet had made us. Our devo was inspirational and left us all spiritually excited for the rest of the week ahead. We are looking forward for the new connections and memories to come tomorrow!

lots of amor,

Bailey and Emma

*to be honest I’m pretty sure the cement workers did a lot of the work and we were grateful for the help, but our blisters say we worked as hard as we could!

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!” Isaiah 52:7