Hello Friends and Family,

This is my first blog from Granada, Nicaragua. We had an awesome week at training camp learning about our team mates and tons of things about missions in our locations. We did many team building obstacles which were pretty tough but was well worth it because our team has grown much closer through them. We had some amazing worship times in training camp. I learned so much there and would not trade the experience at all except for maybe all of the aunt and mosquito bites. We did some outreach work in Little Mexico which was cool because I was basically at home! My team mates are amazing and I think we are going to be doing some pretty amazing things while we are down here. We had a very safe and smooth plane ride down here and it was fun getting to sit by a couple people on my team that I haven't really got to know very well. We had a very good day and it was great to land in Managua and meet Charles and Sarah Kaye. They are a great couple and have two really cool kids. The first thing I saw when we stepped out of the airport were some soldiers with some machine guns which honestly freaked me out a little but everyone I have met here so far seems so friendly. The food and coffee here is rockin!!! Our house in Granada is so cool. It is a very Spanish style house with the clay roof and primitive doors and  a open walled in area. We have a tiny little pool here which has been nice to dip our feet in at the end of the day. The guys don't have it quite so nice though because their house is not furnished but they spend a lot of time at our house. Yesterday we walked around some with our translator and he showed us some really neat things. There is a huge active volcano right outside of our house and you can see the smoke come out of it after it rains. We are going to take a trip up there one day. The sixth largest lake in the world is here also that has freshwater sharks in it which is pretty cool. Today the girls on our team got a chance to walk around with Natalia(one of our translators) and go to the open market which was so much fun and we found a internet café that has amazing coffee and free WI-FI if you have your laptop so I feel very blessed for that. I have enjoyed everything here so far but cannot wait to actually begin doing the ministry type things. This week has kind of just been a very chill week to let our team settle in and bond. We went to Charles and Sarah's church they are building last night and had a great meal and a wonderful time of worship. Charles talked about how the church in Nicaragua (which there are only a few) have been praying for missionaries to come to this area and how our team is the first long term people to come and start things. There are not many programs for anything in this area and Charles and Sarah are the only  missionaries from the states to live in Nicaragua. I think its great that our team is going to be the first ones to break some ground here for the future teams that come to Nicaragua. I have been able to use some Spanish here already and am not as bad as I thought I wasJ The people so far here have been very patient with us trying to communicate with them. Please continue to pray for us as time goes on and for our team to remain unified. I should be blogging about once a week to keep everyone informed of what we're up to!