Things are off to a running start in our outreach! We completed our NIKO which was the bootcamp for missions and finished our week and a half in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Bocas was definitely a beautiful place to be! We stayed in a hostel there in Bocas (I had to share a room with 11 girls!), but it was on the water which was gorgeous. We had a great time in Panama and God really moved! We asked the students to pray and ask God to lead them to ministries around the city of Bocas and they did. We ended up working at a nursing home in the city which I mentioned in my last e-mail. Then we picked up trash in the city and made such an impact that the local news station saw us doing it and asked to interview us about what we were doing there so we were on the local news the second day we were there!
The next couple of days we worked in a really poor community which ended up being made up of indigenous people in Panama, which speak a dialect other than Spanish. The community was flooded and had trash everywhere and was so sad and hopeless. It was so cool because I prayed that God would use us to start the community cleaning up after themselves and see that they can make the difference. I walked away for 10 minutes to pick up some cleaning supplies and when I came back, a group of men were cleaning alongside our group and it was so incredible to see God answer so quickly!
For the next couple of days we spent time cleaning up the local park and painting murals on the benches. One of our students met the mayor of the town and he asked us to help them out which was amazing too. Then we spent time again at the nursing home and painted a mural in the rooms of the nursing home patients.
Some of the other things we did was work at a local hospital and pray with the patients of this hospital. We also were able to go into the town and talk with the people who live there and pray with them. We then did some children's ministry in the city and went to a local church. We had a great time with the people and made so many friends there in the town who we were able to minister to. Many nights we would invite people to dinner with us and most nights we had new guests who would join us and hear about why we were there in Bocas. We had many divine appointments in Panama and are so excited to see what else God has in store for us for the rest of our outreach.
I got back from Panama last night and we are leaving again tomorrow morning for Nicoya, a small town in Costa Rica where we will be distributing Bibles to homes. We will be in Nicoya until October 30th and then we will head to Tamarindo, a beach community and then to Honduras on October 31st. Please keep our team in prayer as we prepare to go. We are excited, but very tired and haven't had much time to rest yet. I really appreciate all of your prayers and encouragement on our outreach. It has been definitely a stretching experience for me as a leader. God is teaching me so much about leadership and myself and where I need to step up as a leader. It is stretching, but good and necessary! Praying for all of you and missing you! God bless!
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