Nicaragua Always Wins

To anyone who has been on an OrphaNetwork trip you are familiar with the phrase:

Nicaragua always wins.

It is a simple mantra that we live by here, and it means exactly what it says. Somehow, with all the planning and praying we do, Nicaragua always seems to win. This country doesn't like to play by rules, and our trips here are constantly affected by different twists of fate.

This week Nicaragua has already been winning, to the point of not even letting half of the group into the country. As soon as we got to the airport a huge storm started raging outside, and the television screen detailing arrivals and departures told us only a piece of the story. As the groups plane was about to land, the storm picked up and started tossing the plane around. Right as they were coming down for a landing they were mere feet from the runway and the pilot made a (possibly miraculous, but slightly annoying to us) decision to push the plane forward with all of its might and jet back into the air and to San Salvador for the night.

So 65 of our 100 kids had to wait an extra half a day to get to Nicaragua, but we are all here now and ready for a great week. Nicaragua- you always win, but we still love you.

Adios estados unidos!

I leave in about 7 hours for a country that is actually only 2200 miles away from Denver. Yet for some reason no one knows where Nicaragua is, or has any idea that it is the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Right now though I am pretty sad to be leaving the richest country in the western hemisphere. I'm not sad to leave it because of all of the things I have here, although I am sure that I will covet the good air conditioning of this country all summer, rather I am sad to leave because once again it means change.

I hope that one of the characteristics of heaven is some sort of constancy. I'm pretty sure that it will be. God is unchanging, his love is unchanging and unending, so a perfect relationship with Him in heaven must have some constancy. I don't want boring. I just want to be able to continue to enjoy the blessings that he gives without having to deal with time and change.

I'll see you all on the other side. -tim

O-HI-O

I grew up in a massive suburban sprawl. Pretty cut green yards around house after house after house.



Huge neighborhoods and enough strip malls to make even a non-hippy, non-whole foods shopper go crazy. I just came from my cool Denver lifestyle back to this suburbia land where I spent 18 years and now am about to head off to the the second poorest country in the western hemisphere. So I started thinking about how many things are already determined in your life by the circumstances that you are born into. (The Calvinistic vs Armenian ways of looking at this statement in general would differ, but that's a conversation for another day.)

Anyways, the main idea that I was pondering today as I was driving was how birth circumstance affects a person's world view and their picture of God. Everywhere I go people have such a naturally different mindset in each place - and for each person it is completely normal, natural, and is likely the mindset that they believe everyone else should have. To many of the poor in Nicaragua God is a liberator, one to set the oppressed free. But growing up in suburbia a person might never think of God like that. One part of me just wants to dive into theology and do word studies and lexical analysis and figure out exactly who scripture says God is so that I can tell all of the wrong people. And while I was at it I would probably figure out exactly how to live the right life and set all the wrong people straight on that too.

But instead I think I am going to try and embrace differences, learn from people who grew up differently than me, and figure out what they have to teach me.

right click picture to listen in a new window!

Music is one of the best expressions of different points of view. Today I learned from a good ole boy who grew up in farm country middle of nowhere Ohio. The simple thesis statement in the song People are Crazy by Billy Currington actually resonates with me quite well. I don't think I am anything like this guy - but we would probably kick it if we ever met, and this song is catchy!

Feet washing and see you laters.

Tonight was my last night in Denver before heading to Cincinnati for a bit and then off to Nicaragua. Leaving this place is really hard. I've been here for 7 months now, and the community that I have been apart of here has been the biggest blessing I ever could have asked for in this season of my life. I am so happy that tonight all that I had to do was say, "see you later." One part of this community that I have been blessed with is my fellowship group from church. Less than a year a go not a single person knew another person in our group that now meets every week. Tonight my good buddy Stu read an excerpt of a book that had impacted him, and that he wanted to share with our group. He read about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples the eve before he was crucified. The night that he had to say his 'see you later's.'

¹It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.^a]">² The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. ³Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. - John 13:1-5

As soon as Stu started reading this my mind went straight to Nicaragua. Almost exactly a year ago I was on the edge of a volcanic lake with 60 high school kids who I barely knew and a middle age Nicaraguan bus driver who happened to be one of my best friends there. And the whole group of us were in tears, having just spent an hour in a slow procession of washing each others feet.

I don't cry too often, but that night I let loose. I think it was because it was one of those moments where I truly felt the beauty of what Jesus did for me. Jesus was so upside down about everything he did. The King of all, our Lord God, bore the ultimate humiliation through death on a cross. The night before, he told all of his disciples - people who would betray him and run from him - how much he loved them. And he told them by becoming a servant of all servants, the lowest of the low, and washing the dirt off of their feet. What a beautiful picture. What a beautiful truth.

In all matters I pray I can learn from the example of Christ. Tonight I pray for all of my friends in Denver, whom I love. You have served me and loved me since I arrived here; you have been the body of Christ in this present Kingdom of God. You have loved a stranger in an upside down way. I can't wait to see you again soon.

Casa Bernabe

Here is a slightly cheesy video that does a great job explaining OrphaNetwork and the Casa Bernabe orphanage.

Note: My boy Jonathon has an appearance at 1:22; he is one of the main reasons I keep going back to Nicaragua.

Lost fans: Does this kind of remind you of a Darma Initiative video?

Click picture to load video.