Joann Weng - Serving The Kingdom

quick update

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hi! i hope you had a good easter! In Nicaragua, the entire week before easter is called "Semana Santa" (Holy Week) and most Nicaraguans head to the beach for vacation. All the schools had a break and a lot of the city shuts down so we didn't have a lot of our regular ministries. I got to go to an orphanage in Jinotepe and spend some time with the kids there who were mostly teenagers! This week our ministries were up and running like usual. Here are some pictures:

if you want to see some more pictures i just added more to my photobucket: http://s426.photobucket.com/albums/pp350/joann_weng/nicaragua2/

april

Sat, 4 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I can't believe April is already here which means a couple of things..
1) it's going to get really really HOT here. I've been sweating more than ever and the trusty weather people say it's going to be 97 degrees tomorrow. yikes! (yes mom & dad, in case you are reading this i am drinking plenty of water)
2) i only have a couple more weeks of ministry left before we start debriefing and getting ready to fly home. It's crazy how quickly time has gone by. It doesn't feel like that long ago that I was at training camp in Georgia meeting my team for the first team and preparing to come to Nicaragua..

Over the past two weeks at Corazon Contento we've gotten a lot of new students. In the beginner class we've been trying to teach the kids the names of fruits and vegetables and how to write the vowels. It's difficult sometimes because even though the children are split into beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes, within each class there are still varying levels of how much the kids can comprehend and communicate. The majority of the kids in the class I help out with have Down Syndrome, so we've been working a lot with helping them learn how to form words.

Helping out over the last few months, I have definitely seen so much improvement in these kids! The other day one of the girls in my class (Melisa) went up to the wall where we have the vowels and numbers posted, and she pretended she was the teacher and made me repeat each vowel (A E I O U) after her. She was pointing at the numbers while she taught me, but we redirected her to the vowels on the wall and it was so great to see! I've had a similar experience with another one of the kids (Gabriel). Before the vowels we learned the numbers one - ten and a lot of the times when you ask him to repeat the numbers after you he won't repeat after you, instead he'll say the next one! For example, when you say UNO (one) he'll say DOS (two) and he always randomly says his favorite number OCHO (eight) ☺ I really think God gives us moments like those to encourage us and make us laugh because he knows when we could really use it.

This week I didn't have feeding program because of issues with the money not coming through for it, but I stayed for a while to hang out with kids. The family that that lets us use their kitchen to cook has six super cute kids that I usually play with while we are waiting for the food to cook. I don't have any recent pictures but here are some from a while ago when Annie and I went:

hope you have a good week :)

spring break & back again!

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hello! this was my first week back in nicaragua after being home for a week for "spring break." i got to spend some good time w/ family and friends while i was home but i am excited to be back for the final leg of my trip :) i have a little less than two months left now so please be praying that i would make the most out of the time i have left and be taking every opportunity to share Christ with the people here!

I started up again with ministry this week at Corazon Contento. This is a picture of two of the kiddos, Gabriel and Melisa :) They both have Down Syndrome and are students in the beginner class that I help out with!

Wednesdays we have a childrens' program at the soccer field by our house. This week we taught about sin and who Jesus is and played with bubbles after the bible lesson and memory verse :) On Thursday i went to help cook at a feeding program down by the lake and on Friday JD, Laura, Seth, Caleb, and I went to Central Park on an ATL and spent some time making balloon animals and face painting :) We met a lot of kids and adults too and invited them to Young Life and church at El Puente.

Some of the people on my team made a video for the prayer house that they started here in Granada. If you want to check it out the link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Zc4ktHeAc&feature=channel_page

last two weeks

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hello! sorry i haven't posted in such a long time! i've been feeling pretty sick this week and haven't been on the internet much. last week i continued helping at Corazon Contento! They just hired a new teacher who studied special education in college, so she's going to help train the other teachers and also be running tests on the children to help diagnose them so we have a better idea of the severity and type of disabilities they have. Since last Saturday was Valentine's day, we had a party at the school on Friday for the kids! They made Valentine's cards for each other and we played musical chairs and had a piata! On Wednesday we had the weekly children's program at the soccer field by the park. The bible story last week was Jonah & the whale! We had to end the program early because there was a drunk man with a machete on the soccer field where we usually hold the program so we grabbed the kids and ran from the field. They were pretty scared but thankfully no one got hurt. This week i worked at corazon contento some more but missed my other ministries because i've been sick from a throat infection. please pray that i get better!! thank you :)

happy february :)

Sat, 7 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

i started working at Corazon Contento (special education center) this week from monday to thursday. The kids were split up into three classes (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and i've been helping with the beginner class! There are about 5 kids in the beginner class - I call them kids but they range from 4 to maybe 30 years old - and we've been learning numbers and working on their speaking/writing skills. A couple of us go each day to help the teachers and do activities with the kids. On Wednesday we had the children's program again! We went out a little before the program started to invite kids from the neighborhood and did a bible story/lesson on daniel & the lion's den. To the left is a picture of some of the kids while we were singing songs :) Yesterday JD, Laura, Caleb, Seth, and I went on an ATL (Ask the Lord) and ended up meeting some guys by the lake. One of the guys we met used to be a thief but he became a Christian 3 months ago. He asked us to go to his house to pray for his wife Yanila because of a skin condition she had developed a few days ago that was causing bumps to appear all over her face. We walked with him to his house and prayed for her and their family.

cute kiddos & la chureca

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hello :) last week we spent some more time helping at the special needs center.

i want you to meet some of the kids!

GABRIEL ALBERTO

KEVIN MELISSA

the kids are so much fun to be around! it is really amazing seeing their faces light up when you say something as simple as "good job!" Paloma really wants for the school to be a place where these kids can come and be safe and loved, and i think it is a wonderful thing she is doing for the city of granada. Once school starts next week I'll be working there 3-4 days a week. Some things you could pray for:

- the legal status of the school

right now Paloma is working with a lawyer to make the special needs school legal. Until then, she cannot get funding through the government & it's very difficult to receive donations/raise money for the school.

- me & my teammates that will be working at the school

please pray that we would be patient with the kids and also be able to show them the love of Christ :)

- the kids

we don't really know what each child's home situation is, but Paloma said it isn't uncommon here for kids with special needs to be mistreated or hidden away by their families. pray that the kids would feel safe at the school and free to be kids!

On Wednesday we took a trip to La Chureca, the trash dump in Managua (the capital of Nicaragua).

i don't even know where to begin to describe it.. maybe this will help:

"It's almost impossible for us to conceive of making a living digging through garbage. But for hundreds of children and adolescents who live on the municipal dump outside Managua, Nicaragua - the poorest country in South and Central America - it's impossible to imagine anything else. Survival takes every minute of their day and every ounce of their strength, leaving nothing but exhaustion where education and playtime should be.

Even small children work up to 12 hours a day, barely finding enough food for a meal, much less valuable trinkets to sell in an effort to keep their families from starvation. They're exposed to combustion fumes, skin disease and infections from glass cuts, not to mention malnutrition and injury from older kids and adults who compete for the same 'spoils.' These are children in desperate need of rescue from abuse, neglect, addiction (many sniff glue due to its availability), low self-esteem and prostitution."
- www.lachureca.org

so that was my week.. hope ya'll are doing well back at home :)

life is ministry

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hi! this week our new leader, seth barnes jr. came! we also got a list of possible ministries to be involved in. Some of the choices were..

- young life

- teaching ESL at the orphanage/at the church

- children's program

- fishing ministry

- prison ministry

- education center for kids w/ special needs

- soccer

- hogar de ninos (boys' home)
- hogar crea (rehab program)

- feeding programs

- women's bible study

- jewelry making w/ opportunity international

- nursing home

- casa de mujer (women's center)

This week we have been checking out some of the ministries and praying about where God would have us do our internship. Right now i plan on spending most of my time working with the special needs children, but I am also interested in doing the children's program and prison ministry.

On Thursday we had a meeting with Paloma, the director of the education center for special needs children. The center is called Corazon Contento (happy heart) and will be opening its doors on February 2. Right now there is a camp there from 1-5 pm for the children, but once the school starts it'll be open from 8-5 pm. Paloma told us that children with special needs in Granada are often times hidden by their families and viewed as a punishment from God because of their sin. Many times families cannot even find someone who will accept money to babysit their kids. Paloma's vision for the center is for it to be a professional school for kids with special needs that will equip them with basic skills that they can use to support themselves. The program is a blessing for the families in Granada with special needs children because it will offer them a safe place for their children to go while they work. On Thursday, we got to meet some of the kids when we went to visit the center.. It was so much fun playing with them and hearing them laugh! it was a really fun way to spend my birthday :)

back in nicaragua :)

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

hello :) i made it back to nicaragua on tuesday afternoon. im still trying to get used to the hot weather again after being back for christmas and new year in texas! so far we haven't been doing too much, just moving in and getting settled in our new home. the house just got built in the back of the church and is going to be used to house future teams that come through granada as well. so far, we've been doing some work cleaning up the property from the construction. hopefully i'll have more to tell you next week about upcoming ministry!

#13

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hi! we just got back yesterday from ometepe. we stayed at cicrin orphanage this past week and spent time playing with the kids there. there are about 30 of them ranging from 3 to older than me! the orphanage is right on the lake and it was absolutely beautiful there, especially watching the sun go down over the lake every day! some of the things i did while i was there was helping out at a medical clinic and feeding program. i also spent a lot of time singing songs from High School Musical with the little girls which was a lot of fun :)

Here is a little background info on the orphanage. it was taken from http://costarica.myadventures.org/index.asp?nMonth=5&nYear=2006

The history of the orphanage is interesting. John Olson, president of Trans World Mission, started Cicrin in 1970 on 3.5 manzanas of land on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. In 1979, during the Sandanista revolution, the children were dispersed to local families in order to protect them from being forced into the army. The orphanage director was jailed and the Sandanistas turned the site into a training base for young soldiers, many enlisted against their will. It was closed after the war and remained abandoned for 11 years, until post-Sandanista president Violeta Chamorro invited John Olson to re-open the orphanage. A U.S. couple was put in charge of the program and a young Costa Rican, Helen Vindis, was hired to help out as interpreter for 3 months. It was a very hard time, and the couple eventually returned to the States, but Helen stayed on at John's request and the Lord's prompting. The new director of the orphanage and one of the doctors who came through on a medical mission met and eventually married, and ran the site for 11 years with Helen staying on as administrator. They left for the Christian Center in Managua three years ago, leaving Helen as director. Facing a steep decline in support and various other dislocations, the orphanage came close to shutting its doors for good. The remaining staff committed to fasting and prayer for 41 days, and as provisions started to come in, they decided to keep the doors open.

thats it for now! i am really excited to be going home tomorow and hope to see yall soon :)

byeeee! and have a merry merry christmas!!

#12

Sat, 6 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

AHHH! it's december :) it's crazy how fast the past three months have gone by! Wednesday was our last real day of ministry here in Granada. We picked up trash for an hour with the kids and then had our children's program. This week the bible story was the parable of the lost sheep which Joe, Laura, Annie, Amy, and Caleb Austin acted out. There's Joe in the picture on the right counting his sheep! It was a lot of fun playing with the kids this week and it was sad saying goodbye to them! When we come back in January we will be living right next to them though so i'm sure we will still be seeing them a lot! Right now they are working on building housing for us in the back of El Puente that should be ready by the time we come back. On Thursday we went to the mall in Managua to renew our visas and on Friday we started packing up and cleaning the girl's house to get ready to move out on Tuesday. On Tuesday we are going to Ometepe island to work at an orphanage there until December 17. Then we will come back to Granada for 2 nights and i'll fly home on the 19th! James will be home too in just 2 days so please pray for a safe trip home :)

#11

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hi :) this week has been a little different than usual. monday and tuesday a couple of us went to the womens center to plan for possibly working with them next year because when we come back in January we will be choosing a specific ministry to pour our time into. Wednesday we had our childrens program, and thursday we had the day off for Thanksgiving! Our team had dinner at El Puente and we didnt think we would have a turkey because theyre so expensive here but we got one and it was really good :) its weird not being home with my family for thanksgiving... right now all four of us are in different countries which is kind of cool - im here in Nicaragua, James is in Kenya, my mom is in Germany and my dads at home in texas until tomorrow! The last couple of days have also been pretty interesting because our electricity got turned off on thursday morning. hopefully itll get turned back on soon! yesterday we went to a cross on the mountain to spend some time in solitude because thats what we studied in class earlier this week. it was my first time up there and it was absolutely beautiful! our whole team rode in the back of a pick up truck to get there which was pretty fun..anyway i hope you all had an amazing thanksgiving! see yall soon :) bye!

#10

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hello! here's an overview of my week...

Monday and Tuesday

monday and tuesday melissa and i went on ATLs together because the kids we didn't teach english this week since the kids have final exams. on monday we went to central park and met some kids there who we played a few games and sang some songs with. we also met a young lady there named Elba Maria who was selling drinks and spent some time talking to her. We told her we were missionaries here in Granada and she told us she was also a Christian. She is the same age as both of us (18) and has 2 kids, one 5 year old and a 3 year old. She told us that was her past life and that her life had changed since she became a Christian. She lives in another city and takes the bus to Granada every day to take English lessons and work because she promised God she would preach His name to people from other nations. We got to spend some time praying with her before we had to go home. On Tuesday we went back to central park and sold Vida Joven raffle tickets to raise money for and promote Vida Joven. Vida Joven is a program kind of like youth group for 15 - 20 year olds (it's called Young Life in the states) and its held at El Puente every Thursday night. This week Charles has also been teaching us in the mornings during class. Monday and Tuesday we learned about preparing ourselvers for the devil's attacks and made models of the armor of God. My group made the helmet of salvation. On Tuesday we also wrote sins that we have been struggling with on rocks that we had to carry in our backpacks all day (except to shower) until Friday afternoon to demonstrate how the sins we carry around hinder our lives.

Wednesday

We picked up trash and had the children's program after again. This week we did a skit of Lazarus being raised from the dead which the kids really seemed to enjoy and pay attention to. Carlos played a song for us and we also played some games and prayed with the kids. A lot of the same kids from last week came so it was fun seeing them again!

Thursday
Annie and I went to a feeding program in a poorer area down by the lake with our translator Mario. It was interesting getting there because a lot of the land was flooded so we had to climb through barbed wire and walk on sand bags to get to the kitchen. We helped clean the beans by picking out the bad ones and picked the rocks out of the rice while Mario cleaned the cow liver. While we waited for the beans to cook we played with the kids that are part of the family that let us use their kitchen. Around noon the kids came with their bowls to get their food. They get tickets for the feeding program by attending a children's program on Saturday at El Puente.

Friday

We went to the daycare at the orphanage again and played with the kids. Haha it was pretty intense.. I got snot and pee all over me while I was holding a little girl who fell asleep while she was eating lunch.

Saturday

Yesterday we went to the laguna de apoyo! The lagoon is inside the crater of a volcano and we spent the day swimming and hanging out there. it was so pretty! some people went sailboating and tana and i went kayaking for a little bit. they also had an area of the lagoon where the ground under the water was really hot so we played with the mud there!

so that was my week! in two weeks we are moving out of our house and going to an orphanage on Ometepe island to help out there. Then we are coming back to Granada to pack up and go home!! goodbyeee!

#9

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hola amigos :) I can't believe another week has gone by!! this week we had the day off on Monday to rest and relax a little because the school and a lot of things in town were closed because of the elections in Nicaragua last weekend. We started back up again with class and ministry on tuesday. Next week is our last week teaching ESL because the week after next week the kids have exams and then they are done with school until January. Wednesday was trash pick-up day but we've been talking as a team about how to incorporate the gospel more into the ministries we have going on, so we decided to end trash pick-up a little earlier from now on and do a mini children's program with the kids that usually come to help us pick up trash and any other kids in the neighborhood that want to come. About 20 kids showed up this week which was really awesome! We played a game and sang "Jesus Loves Me" in Spanish with them. The picture above to the left is from the game on Wednesday and the picture to the right of it is Luis! haha i had to put this picture in my blog because he's the cutest thing ever and always seems to be hanging out in his underwear! Luis is one of the kids that comes and helps us pick up trash except this little guy doesnt understand what trash is so he picks up rocks and puts them in our trash bags :) After the game on Wednesday Laura gave a short message and we prayed with the kids. I got to see the same kids that help us with trash again on Thursday because I filled in for Sarah at soccer practice this week. The kids are all cousin and live right in front of the soccer field where the team Laura and Sarah coach have practice, so they come out to play! Haha I have absolutely NO experience playing soccer so I played with the kids while Laura practiced with some of the guys on the soccer team. That's pretty much it for this week! Tomorrow we are going back to the market in Masaya to buy souvenirs and gifts :) i hope all is well! Its almost thanksgiving timeee!! byee!

#8

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hellooo! last saturday night we went to the CREA event that i wrote about in my last post. it was held right outside the CREA home in Granada. There were a lot of dramas, testimonies, and amazing worship! Roberto, who is the spiritual therapist to the guys in the CREA program, spoke and at the end of the night one of the guys from CREA ended up accepting Christ! Theres a picture of him to the right from last Friday when we were raising money for the program. We started a train to the Happy Song, and unfortunately Robertos wife Patricia fell and hurt her ankle. She went to a hospital and got a cast so please pray that her ankle heals right! this wednesday i went on an ATL (Ask the Lord - you pray and ask God for direction on where you should go in the city) with 2 of my teammates Laura and Caleb Austin and our translator Mario. We ended up going to a women's center where women who are divorced can go learn different skills such as typing, sewing, and english to help them get a job to support themselves and their kids. Mario asked if we could start a bible study there and they said it was no problem which is really great! Hopefully we will be able to start that because it will be awesome to have a bible study that we can invite women in the city to. It has been really amazing seeing God open all these ministry opportunities each week! On Thursday I went with Jessica and Caleb to help cook at a feeding program at Colegio San Antonio, the same school we teach English at on Mondays and Tuesdays. The feeding program is for the kids at the school who cannot afford to eat at home and feeds about 30 of the students. From tuesday to thursday this week instead of having class we have also been receiving training at El Puente by a couple who are part of the organization Community Health Evangelism (CHE).This Friday we went to the daycare again where the adorable little kiddos always put me in a happy mood :) thats pretty much it for this week! hope things are going well back at home! thank you so much again for your support and prayers!! see you in just 6 weeks!

#7

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hi everyone! happy november! :) time seems to be going by so fast here. another month and a half and i will be back for winter break! this week we taught english again on monday and tuesday. We were invited to dinner on Tuesday night by a local family whose son we have gotten to know through church so that was a lot of fun! the food was SO good :) I love that we can build relationships with people here over a long period of time, and i think that is what i enjoy most about this trip even though it is hard to be away from home for so long! On Thursday we practiced our drimes (skits set to music) at the guys' house because there is a big event tonight for HOGAR CREA which is a rehab program here for drug addiction. The youth from a few of the local churches will be performing dramas tonight and giving testimonies so our team will be participating. Yesterday we helped raise money/awareness for CREA by going out into the city with the guys in the rehab program and collected money and handed out flyers for the event tonight. just wanted to say thank you for all your prayers! goodbye!!

#6

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hello! this week was pretty similar to last week in terms of ministry.. we have a pretty set schedule now of what we're doing each day of the week. Monday and Tuesday we taught English at the school and Wednesday was trash pick up again. On Thursday Amy and I went on an ATL with our translator Mario and he took us to an old people's home in Granada. We got to spend some time going around and talking to the people there. Mario told us that some of the people are there because their families pay for them to be there and others are taken in because they've been abandoned or just don't have a place to live. We met one woman named Maria del Carmen who we spent the most time talking with and she kept saying that all they really want is to be loved. She was really grateful that we came to visit and kept asking when we would come back to see her. I think visiting the old people's home would be a really cool ministry opportunity and i hope that we get to go back! In the mornings we have class at El Puente except on Thursday and Friday when we have ministry in the morning and class in the afternoon. This week Charles Kaye has been teaching us from the book Right With God and has really been challenging us to constantly be looking for ways to share the gospel with people. One of the girls on our team decided to go home so she left on Wednesday and its been really different without her here. My now ex-roomate (we switched rooms yesterday!) also went home for a wedding but she will be back on monday so please pray for her safe return! oh! i have also been feeling pretty homesick this week so if you could please pray for that i would appreciate it a lot! thank you! byebyee!

#5

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hola! this week has passed by so fast! Monday we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving since one of our leaders, Jamie, is from Canada! We surprised him with dinner at the girls house and decorated our place. Theres Sarah and Laura taking a break from making cornflake chicken (yummmm) to pose for a pic :) We didnt get to teach english this week at the school because of a school holiday and a miscommunication about the schedule, but were starting again on monday! Wednesday we had trash pickup and it was really cool because i got to know the kids from the neighborhood who come to help a lot better! We got to pray for one of the young girls there too whose been having bad stomach pains for a while so it was really neat to see God using something like picking up trash together as a way to start introducing Christ to the kids in little ways. Then yesterday we went to the daycare at the Sisters of Charity orphanage again. Oh my goodness the kids are soo cute! haha i know i said it in my last blog already but look at them!! Oh if you could pray for my eye i think its infected and also if you could please pray that i would have more energy i would appreciate it a lot :) mmkayy i gotta go home for lunch but thankk youu! byee!

#4

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hello again! Annie, Sarah, Melissa, and I started teaching this week at Saint Anthony's School! It was pretty intimidating at first because we had no idea how much English they knew already and we don't know too much spanish but once we got into the time went by so fast! On Mondays we teach the 11-13 year old kids, and we thought we'd be teaching them on Tuesdays too but we found out when we got there that we were teaching an older class who are 16-20 years old. They knew a lot more English than the other class so I just asked them a lot of questions so they could practice speaking english. One of the questions i asked was to tell me about themselves and I expected them to start off with their hobbies or a description of their families but some of the kids began their answers with "My life has been really sad..." or "My life is really complicated" and it just broke my heart to hear them respond that way. It was such a reminder of how blessed I really am and how often I forget that and take the life i have for granted. I am learning so much from the people here and it has only been one month! We celebrated our one month anniversary as a group together on October 8 with some yummy cake :) On Wednesday we had trash pickup...we're going to be picking up trash on the street El Puente is located on every Wednesday from now on. Going into it I honestly did not want to do it but after this past weekend I am so excited to go back and pick up trash! Haha I never thought I would say that but the Lord really opened my eyes to what ministry really is this week. Our entire team went down to the neighborhood by the church with our trash bags and gloves totally expecting it to only be us picking up trash but all the kids from the neighborhood joined in and when their parents saw them some of them came to help too! The picture to the right is a group pic of us with all the kids that came :) Yesterday we went to the day care at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage. Right when we walked into the playground area where all the kids were we were showered by hugs from all the adorable kids! The little girls had a runway show and the guys from our team actually had one too. It was a lot of fun loving on them and I was SO tempted to steal one and bring them home with me :P to the left is JD pretending to be dead with all the kids on top of him :) haha they were all so cute! so that was my week! hope you are all doing well too! byeeee!

#3

Sun, 5 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hola! this past week has been really busy! we have class every morning monday - friday at El Puente and we just finished the first book we've been studying Victory Over Darkness by Neil T. Anderson. That's Jennifer modeling the book! :) After that we walk back home for lunch and in the afternoons we have ministry time. These past two weeks we have been doing a lot at El Puente with construction and helping to maintain the property. A group from Lakeshore Church in rockwall, tx came to granada this past week and a few guys with construction experience came to el puente so we helped them a little with cementing the walls. I took some pictures but i accidentally deleted all the pics off my camera earlier this week :/ i was sad but i took a lot more! here are some pictures of us working on Friday! the first one is becca raking the weeds

then the other one is me with the

wheelbarrow. On thursday we went to a conference held by Lakeshore Church at Hotel Granada. There was a separate men's and women's conference. The church from texas is more charismatic so we saw some things during the laying of hands/prayer and impartation service that i'm not really used to but we talked about it as a group. I think overall it was a good experience and it really expanded my view of how people worship. Yesterday was our free day and all of us went to
managua (the capital of Nicaragua) except a few people who stayed in granada and a couple of the guys who are a basketball tournament with Vida Joven (Young Life). Today we went to a church at El Puente. We go there the first and third sundays of every month and the other sundays we are free to go to different churches in granada. So far we've been to three different churches here and it's cool to see how different each church is. The picture to the left is of the service this morning! We will be starting more ministries next week like teaching english at a local school and at a girl's orphanage which i am really excited for! Sarah, Melissa, Annie, and I will be teaching ESL to 9th graders at the Colegio San Antonio every monday and tuesday until we come home for Christmas. We just found out today and will be starting tomorrow! mmk that's it for now! i will definitely update my blog again next weekend! oh and i added more pics to photobucket.com/joannweng :)

#2

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

hi again! my roomate becca let me borrow her USB cable so now i can show you pictures of the last two weeks! the picture to the left is of our cabin at training camp in gainseville, georgia. i lived on the top bunk so it was kinda scary because its so high but fun at the same time too! during training camp we had sessions in the morning where we were taught about things like spiritual warfare and children's ministry by different speakers. then in the afternoon we had teambuilding activities! my favorite one was when our team was in a fake "plane crash" and we had to make it back to safety as a team except all of us had different injuries. for example some people couldn't use their legs or arms at all and other people were blind, deaf, or mute. my injury was that i could only walk backwards! we also learned two different "drimes" or dramas at training camp to "Set me free" by Casting Crowns and "In the Light" by DC Talk. overall training camp was a lot of fun and it really helped to bring us together as a team. it feels like i've known everyone foreeever and not just two weeks! we were at training camp for a week and then we flew in to nicaragua on monday night and took a school bus to granada. the girls and guys live in separate houses but they're only about two minutes away from each other. here are some pictures of our beeautiful house! this is our kitchen directly to the left and on the far left is a picture of me chilling in our empty pool! we filled it up and put our feet in a couple of times but we had to empty it today because the water was turning green :/ if you can see the door behind me in the picture that's where i live! i share a room with two other girls, becca and jenn who are both super extra nice! mm so far this week we've just been going around town a lot and getting acquainted with everything. we went on a scavenger hunt on wednesday and thursday which was a lot of fun! last night we went to our first church event at La Puente, which is the AIM base here in granada. There was a children's and adult program there so we got to help with the cute nicaraguan kids and teach them a couple of songs! oh yeah! here's a picture of the market! we've been there a couple of times. it's really busy and reminds me of taiwan! i didn't get to go to the market when our team tried morongas (blood and rice) or punuelo (yuca) because i was sick but i heard it was interesting..haha! if you want to see more pictures of my trip so far i've uploaded some of the ones i've taken onto photobucket... the link is http://photobucket.com/joannweng... i'll try to add more pictures onto it from time to time! sorry there aren't any descriptions on any of the pictures yet but i'll try to add some in later so you know what's going on. i have to go home now for dinner but i'll post again sooon! OH if you could please pray for me i would really appreciate it! my stomach has been hurting these past couple of days :( so please pray that it gets better! muchas gracias! adios!

my first post!

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

HIIII! yay its my first post! i just got to nicaragua on monday after an INTENSE week of training camp in gainseville, georgia. i took a lot of pictures here and at training camp but i forgot my USB cable at home so i cant post my pictures :( im trying to see if i can get a card reader at the electronics store here or borrow someones with the same camera so bear with me until then if this is super extra boring! haha sorryyy. AH! we have to go soon but Nicaragua is BEAUTIFUL. we walked to the lake yesterday and had some authentic nicaraguan food that was super yummy :) so far we are just getting familiar with the city & we will start most of our ministry next week! we are going to the market in a few minutes so i cant write much right now but just wanted to update yall on how im doing! i hope you are doing well tooo! i will definitely post again next week and hopefully i will have much more to tell you about nicaragua and what we are doing and more time to write in here! sorry for the short post! byeee!