Here is a piece I wrote for our church's newsletter, some reflections on my trip to Nicaragua last summer.
Nicaragua Reflections
After the Nicaragua team was announced this year, people came up to me at church and said, “I can’t believe YOU’RE going!” It didn’t seem so surprising to me, because God had been doing a lot in my life and leading me to go on this trip. But I realize that to other people, it must have seemed crazy: I’m a stay at home mom, mother to three girls (ages 5, 3, and 1.5). It probably sounded like madness that a mom of three kids 5 under would feel comfortable leaving her family for 10 days to go on a service trip.
So let me tell you how I ended up going to Nicaragua...
I am a linguist by training, and I love languages and experiencing different cultures. I speak Spanish, and I worked as a computational linguist at a couple different speech tech companies before deciding to stay home when my first daughter was born. My husband Wes and I have also have a heart for serving kids without parents, and we used to volunteer with Help one Child (a program that serves at-risk children in the Bay area) before we had kids of our own.
I first heard of Arms of Love through our church 5-6 years ago around Christmas time. There was a presentation about different giving opportunities around the holidays. When I heard that Arms of Love operated in Nicaragua, and that our church was building a relationship with them, I immediately thought: “ it would be awesome if someday I could actually go there and serve.” It felt like such an exciting way to use my Spanish, my love of different cultures, and my heart for children to serve God.
Last year, when I heard the Vineyard was sending a team for its first mission trip, my heart leapt and sank almost simultaneously. This was exactly the kind of thing that pulled at my heart strings, but at the time, I had three little kids, and leaving them at home would still be no small feat. My youngest daughter would only be 6 months old, and it would be virtually impossible to leave her. As most people know, having children changes your life. In many many ways. You put parts of yourself aside to love and care for these little people in your life. You put your dreams and desires aside because there is something much more important in your focus. It is a beautiful, but exhausting thing. Although I wanted to join the Nicaragua team, I knew it would not be possible at that time.
However, God continued to work on my heart over the next year. It is an honor and a gift to be able to stay home to take care of my children, but quitting my job, moving, my husband Wes changing jobs, having three children in 4 years, as well as losing my mother and my grandfather in that same time frame put me in a place of hardly remembering who I was. Over the last year or so, God has been reminding me of my passions of language and culture, and more importantly reminding me that those passions are not just things I like, but parts of me that He created, and they are GOOD. Paying attention to my dreams and desires are good too, because He put them there.
So when the second Nicaragua trip came up this year, my family was in a different place, and I was in a different place. At first, the idea of going still sounded impossible, but a good friend encouraged me to pray about it and consider it. She knew that this sort of thing made my heart leap, so she knew it was something to pay attention to. So I prayed about it, and I talked with Wes about it. In prayer, I had the strong sense that this trip was a sort of a door I needed to walk through. I didn’t know what would be on the other side, but I felt like I needed to go through it. Wes was completely supportive. He didn’t hesitate once about sending me out of the country for 10 days. We talked with his mom, and she was willing and excited to come down from Oregon and help Wes with the girls. God made the path easy, so we went for it.
So I did it: I went through the door God opened for me. The trip of course was amazing. I’m still processing what it means to go through this door, and I’m still processing what will be next for me. While I process, I’m trying to pay attention to the things that were really life giving to me on the trip. I loved getting to use my Spanish to connect with the staff and kids of Brazos. It felt really powerful to help provide a staff retreat to the workers who are really in the trenches playing a powerful role with the kids. I know how hard parenting is, and how much respite is needed, so it felt really good to provide a little respite to the staff there. I also really enjoyed getting a break from my usual role as “mommy”, and use some of my non-parenting gifts that I’ve put on hold for a while.
I missed my kids terribly, but I felt like my whole self in a way that I haven't for a long time. I also really enjoyed the simplicity of life we saw in the people in Nicaragua. Most of the people we interacted with have so much less than we do here, but they love God deeply. We have so many “things” here in the bay area, but most of them are not really necessary, nor do they help us connect with each other or with God. I really hope to integrate some of the simplicity I experienced there back to my life here.
There were so many meaningful moments from the trip, but I want to share one that impacted me particularly deeply. We were taking a walk out to see a Nicaraguan family who lived about 10 minutes from where we were staying at Brazos de Amor (the mission site we were serving at). It was a chance to interact directly with the community nearby, not just the kids who live at Brazos.It was absolutely beautiful on our walk into the local community. We saw giant bamboo stalks clanging in the wind, dirt roads surrounded by lush vegetation, and lots of flowers--including the beautiful bougainvillea flowers we also have in California.
We arrived at the house of the local family, with an outdoor kitchen on the left, a porch and small house on the right. Next door was the grandmother’s house. There was a small garden planted behind the grandmother’s house, and flowers planted in front of the main house. Everything was clean and well kept and the whole family was happy and very welcoming.
The people who live in the house were a mother and one of the little girls from the Community Cares program I had met the day before and her little sister. The girls were very sweet. I introduced myself to the little sister and asked her name and age. I was struck that she was turning three this summer, just like my middle daughter. They invited us to look into their house to see what it was like. I looked inside, and in the small room, I saw a very old bunk bed that Brazos had donated for the girls, another twin bed for the mother, a small TV, and a closet.
The two girls were similar ages to my older two daughters, but I was struck by the stark contrast of their living situations and their daily lives.. My girls also sleep in bunk beds, but their room is filled with clothes, toys, and dress up clothes. My girls’ room is about the size of this family’s entire house. I didn’t see a toy in sight at this Nicaraguan home. I was moved to tears at the beauty and simplicity of this place, but also the lack of resources (the mother mentioned in passing that the water had been off for a week). My life as a mother at home with little girls is consumed with taking care of them and filling their days with activities. I could not even begin to imagine how different this mother’s experience was.
I excused myself from the group to take a moment to collect myself. It was all very overwhelming to take in. As I wiped away my tears, the grandmother came out of her house and said hello to me. She pointed at the sky and said, “No es triste. Tenemos Dios”, which means, “It is not sad. We have God.” She was beaming. She meant it. Their possessions and resources are few, but their hearts are full.
Having the experience of using my gifts and participating with God in rediscovering some of my passions played a huge part in feeling whole on this trip. But seeing the simplicity in the Nicaraguan way of life played a huge role too. The busyness of my daily life can often feel overwhelming, but God isn’t asking me to do more things, or be someone I’m not, or fill my life with things and activities to feel whole. He has a completely different idea about what whole looks like. There is freedom in just being who He made you to be, and using the gifts He’s given you to use. He is enough, and what He has given me is enough. Seeking Him and serving those around me with the things He has given me is part of His satisfying simplicity.
