we’ve officially made it Nicaragua and are now living on the field! L squad just finished our first week of ministry and the Lord has been so evident. We’re only two weeks in, but at our time in Nicaragua we will be doing prayer walks, working on a farm, hospital visits, assisting in a dump ministry and helping out at a micro churches in the area. We are so expectant for how the Lord is going to move here!
That being said, transition has been hectic. I feel like I haven’t experienced consistency in a while with all the changes in life style (living in Nicaragua being one of them). New seasons are a part of life and while they can be difficult, It’s so important. Change is a topic that has really been highlighted for me recently so here are a few ways the Lord has taught me about seasons:
The other day I was working in the orchard on the farm and one of the staff was talking to me about pruning. We had been clipping off the unhealthy branches of the guava trees so that the trees would give more nutrients to the branches that were producing fruit. When we had come to a particular group of the orchard that looked unkept she explained that those trees were not cared for since June because some production had been halted at the farm. Now fast forward, we were clipping off branches and getting rid of the rotten fruit. Pruning is necessary to keeping a tree healthy. John 15: 2 says “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
Similar to a tree, we have to make sure there is no bad fruit in our lives so it doesn’t corrupt the good. We can nurture the good fruit a lot better when we don’t also need to pay attention to things in our life’s that do not serve the Lord. In the orchard it was very obvious which trees had been pruned and what ones were dying as a result of the opposite. I also took this as “out with the old and in with the new.” There is a time and place for all things so if we try to keep things in our lives that have reached their time limit, then they will rot away. For me, I am realizing what things in my life I am needing to prune and what I must nurture so I can grow closer to God!
