God is amazing

So, I was just sitting on the front porch of the villa watching the sunset this evening,and it was like God just painted, right in front of me the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen!! You know what the crazy thing is... I have never seen 2 sunsets that are exactly the same. God is so creative and sometimes I am too busy to stop and admire His artwork!! I serve a Wonderful God and am so glad to be daughter of the King :) Thank you Lord blessing me in so many ways!!
Today is also Mother's Day!!! I would like to give my Mommy a shout out on my blog!!! I love her so much and wish I could be there in person today to tell you how much I love you :) You are the best Mother I could ever ask for thanks for setting such a godly example for me!!! I love you so much <3 Your daughter, Ashley Suzanne

Nicaragua

This week I was blessed with the chance to visit another country. We had the option whether or not we wanted to go to Nicaragua... so it ended up that only 11 people wanted to come. It was an all girls trip, which was totally amazing!! Well we did have SCORE reps with us Marlon and Manolo, they were a blast!!! We left Tuesday morning early and hit the border early that afternoon. It went pretty smoothly except for a few little things!! We arrived at the ABEM camp later that evening, it was absolutely beautiful!!
The next day we woke up bright and early to a wonderful breakfast and headed to the grocery store to buy some food for the orphanage which we visited later that afternoon. What a blessing the children were at the orphanage... we played games and shared the Word of God with them.
Later that afternoon we had planned to visit at an all women’s hospital and visit bed-to-bed sharing the Word of God with the women. However, when we arrived they would not let us in due to the flu so we had to change up our plans, and the Lord knew exactly what He was doing. We had the opportunity later that afternoon to go into the city of Managua and visit a site where families had be living and protesting for 2 yrs due to a pesticide within Banana Farms where they had previously been living and working. The pesticide caused the women to become sterile and created problems with the men as well. I have never been in a place as poor as what this place was. It was a very neat and humbling experience, because it made me realize how much the Lord has provided and blessed both my family and I. It was so cool to share Christ with those people, because they were so desperate physically as well as spiritually.
That was a wonderful day to just to share with the Nicaraguan people and show God's love to them. That evening all of us girls came together and shared with one another all that the Lord has taught us and it was a beautiful time in the Lord. I know it brought us girls closer to one another.
The next day we went to Lake Nicaragua which is the biggest, fresh-water lake in the world and is the only place where fresh-water sharks exist. We took a little boat tour on the lake and saw many beautiful islands throughout the lake. We later went to the ancient city of Granada and had lunch. After that we had a short time to shop and then went and visited with a missionary's family there in the city.
The next day was very CRAZY we got up at 4 am left and hoped to catch breakfast later down the road. We reached the border at 8 am and were all really sleepy!!! So we all get in the van about 11 am in hopes to head into CR!!! Well, there was a little problem... there were 8 miles of semi trucks blocking the exit of the border that were protesting their rights. So, we sat in traffic for hours with hundreds possibly thousands of people. Not to mention they were from tons of different countries and could have been infected with the flu. So, we were using hand sanitizer like every 15 minutes it was an exciting day.
We chilled in our van until about 5 that evening... good thing we had crackers because we had yet to eat breakfast or lunch!!! At 5 p.m. all the passengers including us formed a march up to the government building and argued the fact we could not get by the truckers. It was absolutely crazy; I was officially participating in a protest in Spanish on the border on CR and Nicaragua!! How exciting!! That lasted for a good 2 hrs until we began laying on horns and everyone was going crazy!!! Finally, they let us through about 7:30 pm. It was crazy to see 8 miles of semi trucks lined up!! We finally made it to a restaurant that evening about 9:45 it was wonderful to get some real food!! Then we arrived at the villa that morning at 1:30 am. What an adventure it was... I had never been so glad to make it back safe to the villa in my life!!! Wow, thank you Lord for one more adventure you allowed me to have in my life!!!