Too many thoughts

Being at Rancho Ebenezer usually gives me lots of time to think about things and the beginning of this week was no different.  I’m not usually one to share my thoughts with everyone, but here are just a few things I’ve been thinking about lately. 

The future: As my time here is quickly coming to an end and I have to realize that I am a senior in college, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I graduate and have to “grow up.”  I haven’t come to any solid decisions, but my experiences here in Nicaragua have definitely given me more to think about and helped me see options for my future.  Right now, these are the three things running through my head the most. 1) I still look back on my experience this past summer and through college and would love to work on a farm with animals…somewhere. 2) I am still very interested in animal nutrition and would love to find a job that deals with that…just not sure what that job would be. 3) I would still love to work overseas with farmers in developing countries at some point.  Besides these ideas, I have had to think about where I want to be, how many of these jobs I am actually qualified for, and where would I find these kind of jobs. 

Then I was listening to music this week and the song At Your Feet by Casting Crowns came on.  One verse especially spoke to me:

Here at Your feet

I lay my future down

All of my dreams

I give to You now and

I find peace

I find peace

So, in my search for what the future brings, I lay the worries at Jesus’s feet while I continue searching and deciding.

Goodbyes: I met a girl from New Zealand on the bus this week and after parting our separate ways I got thinking about something I have thought about many times before.  It always amazes me how many times we meet people and then say goodbye without knowing if we will ever see them again.  It could be someone we talked to for an hour on a bus or someone we spent a week with on a trip, but once you each leave, each person goes on with their own life.  It’s especially crazy here, being in a different country, meeting new people almost every week.  In a month, we will go back to another country, while many of the people we have met will never get the chance to leave Nicaragua, and others will go on to other parts of the world.  Now being involved with the CRC and Dutch community through Dordt, many of these people we meet we are bound to make connections with at some point in the future because that is how the Dutch people are, but there are many we may never see again.  Saying goodbye in December to my host family will be difficult most likely, because, although I hope to get back here someday, only God knows our futures.  It will be more difficult than saying goodbye to my friends and family in the States was, because I knew in August that I would most likely be seeing everyone again shortly.  

Ok, enough of my thoughts for now.  Thankfully, after a Monday full of those thoughts, my brain was busy the rest of the week learning.  Tuesday I learned all there is to know about rabbits.  In the morning, Carlos taught me what he knows and I learned about breeding rabbits and saw the charts where they keep track of all the rabbits.  In the afternoon, I went with Yaser, who takes care of rabbits all day long.  He taught me more about the care of rabbits and I got to tattoo a few rabbits’ ears.  Since all of this was in Spanish, my brain had to work extra hard to understand and retain the information, but I think I learned a lot.  Wednesday I also did a lot of learning in the afternoon.  I went with Carlos to a presentation in town on chickens.  A lot of the information was pretty basic stuff, but still interesting.  It was especially neat to see the differences between what I know about chicken production in the Midwest compared to Central America.

Now I am in Leon for a short weekend before going back to Rancho Ebenezer.  Tomorrow I am excited because we are going to a Quinceanara.  I hope that it is as fun as I think it will be.  Other than that, I am busy working on final papers and projects for my classes, so I keep plenty busy.

It is hard to believe that my time here is coming to an end, but I am super excited to see everyone and super not excited to be cold…but I’ll survive.