Where to start?

#1- Sorry for not blogging lately. I wish I could say I had a good reason for it. The reality is that I'm simply trying to live as much as I can down here these last few weeks and so that means that my time on the internet has lessened.

#2- It is getting hard to realize that in about 5 weeks I will be leaving this country that I have fallen in love with. It's especially hard to not know when I might return but know that I'm going to be leaving part of my heart here. I have never felt so "right" in a place. I pray that God will bring me back and soon.

#3- Corazon Contento is going really great. Actually, if I could come back down and work with the school more I would love to! Paloma has such a heart to change this country and each of the professors put in 8 hour work days (twice as much as my 4 hours- which can be exhausting). We are starting to get some new students but at the same time some of the students who have been there are starting to not come. I don't really understand why: Corazon watches their children for basically 9 hours a day for free but yet some still don't bring their children.

#4- This week is Semana Santa which means that there is no school. Most people just go to the beach. Therefore, I do not have Corazon this week and I had the ability to go back to the nursing home that I wrote about a while ago. Annie and I washed pots for 2 hours that were covered with black on the bottom and stained our hands and clothes. (Actually, Annie still can't get all the black off of her arms). It was alot of fun and we were able to help them. Although, we did find a spider in one of the pots--- I have gotten used to bugs being down here. But I wil never get used to spiders. Ever. And this one was huge! We thought it was dead... it wasn't. Annie tried drowning it: didn't work. So we ended smashing it with a piece of lumber.

#5- I also helped out with the children's ministry yesterday afternoon which was alot of fun. Painted some nails hot pink.

#6- I've been so blessed with some great Nicaraguan girlfriends down here. We get together and they paint my nails, making them art- flowers, colors, dots... and they're so selfless. We love to sit around and listen to music, maybe dance, talk... For a long time, I wondered if I was going to leave Nicaragua with any real relationships with Nicaraguan girls: they can tend to be more shy than the guys. I'm going to miss them alot.

#7- The past weekend, I did have a hard time with wanting to be alone. I've always been an introvert, just sometimes I am able to act like I'm not. And after 7 months of living with 15 people all the time and never being able to truly get away from people... it finally caught up with me. I was able to take Tuesday morning off and just allow myself time to sit and be alone. It helped alot and I'm happy to say I'm feeling alot better now.

#8- In reading the Bible lately, I have come across some verses that I have never read before. And I don't know why. And of course, as I write this blog, I can't remember them all or even their references. Be back in one second after looking online for one of the verses... Finally found it. 1 Corinthians 15: 10a - "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect." I'm not going to go into a whole long explanation of why I like this verse or what I think it means. I simply like it and I wonder why I have never heard it before.

#9- April is supposedly the hottest month of the year here. It has been a little hotter but not unbearable. And then we're told that the first day of May, it pours. And it rains every day in May. So it's possible that we will get get continual rainfall in May til we come home.

#10- Above all, God is really great. He gives me what I need daily and manifests Himself to me in many ways. There is no place I can go here without seeing Him and being reminded of His intense love for me. And I only hope that I have been able to show a part of that love to everyone I have come in contact with here...