On Tuesday we had our final training session. Yikes. Time has flown by so quickly that I can't even believe it. 11 days. In 11 days at this time I will be *this close* to landing in Nicaragua.... So anyways... The meeting.... We got our flight information (yay!) and it made things WAY more real. Originally there was supposed to be a smaller group going so they reserved spots one one flight for all of us, but then they ended up letting more people come so we are split into two different flights. Nate is in the big group and Jenn and I are in the smaller group (15 women, it's going to be a partay!). We leave at 6:20 am on Monday the 14th and fly into Miami where we have an 8 hour layover and then we fly out of Miami to Nicaragua and get there around 7:30 pm. Coming back, we leave Managua on Monday June 21st (my birthday!) at 1:00 and fly into Miami, only have a 2 hour layover and then get home at 7:15.
We also got our itinerary, which I am SUPER excited about! I will post it before we go so that you can follow along and pray for us as we're going along.
We talked about having good, servant attitudes on the trip and it was broken down into 5 A's:
1. Aware- Be aware of who we are serving and of each other.
2. Available- Be available to what is needed.
3. Accepting- Be accepting of where we are.
4. Abandon- Abandon your own agenda
5. Abide- Abide in the Father's way.
I really like how it was broken down like that. They also said that there could be last minute schedule changes and so we all need to be really flexible.
We also did some cultural training and talked about being aware of what we are doing and saying and how it might be seen by others. We also talked about safety and using common sense etc. Some of the subjects we talked about were:
1. Alcohol- These kids have been surrounded by alcoholism and therefore to them there is no such thing as "casual drinking". Drinking means getting drunk and out of control.
2. Dress- Being modest
3. Gifting- How giving love (quality time, attention, encouragement) can build independence.
4. Politics- There is widespread distrust of officials and the unemployment rate is 65% so there is severe poverty, alcoholism and orphaning. So going in and complaining about our government problems, which really seem small in comparison, is probably not the most sensitive way to go...
5. Dating- The orphanage has a no dating policy. I guess there was a girl who befriended a guy that came down there on a trip like ours and was emailing back and forth with him and then felt burned when he stopped emailing and really these kids have had a lot of being "burned" by the people in their lives that we don't need to be adding to that.
6. Religion- Again, be sensitive to things that they've experienced in the past.
I think I'll break this post into two posts... So I'll save the rest for tomorrow...... :)
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