Glasses and Thanksgiving

My parents were here for the week of Thanksgiving, so this was really the first year we celebrated turkey day. We spent time at our house in Teustepe, visited our friends Ricardo and Santo and spent 4 days at the beach.

My parents really enjoyed the time we spent with Ricardo and his family. I had asked my parents to bring some reading glasses because I knew many of the women from the sewing group had trouble threading the needle of their machines. The glasses were intended for the older women, so I did not expect them to help Ester, Santo's and Ricardo's daughter. Ester has had eye problems, but I never thought cheap reading glasses would help her out. She was so excited to try them on and realize she could read better with them. Another lady, Mercedes, in the sewing coop had had glasses, but they had recently broken. She was talking with Ricardo that morning about needing some new glasses and Ricardo told her to pray. She was thrilled to see God answered her prayer immediately. Mercedes is a widow that has 10 children...she is the bread winner, so she needs to be able to see well in order to make clothes she can sell.

The day before Thanksgiving we went to San Juan del Sur beach and stayed there 3 nights. Turkey day night we went to a nice restaurant/resort called Pelican Eyes. They had everything we could have hoped for...except the dessert was not as good as home made. The rest of the week we relaxed, enjoyed the beach and ate good food. It was a great time with my parents and we look forward to their next visit...who knows when that will be.

Time in Asiento Viejo

In November, we had a group here from Rimrock church in Rapid City, South Dakota. We spent our time in Asiento Viejo helping out pastor Ricardo. Ricardo had proposed a vet tech training for 4-5 people in the community because no one has this training and there are a lot of animals. The other thing proposed was to help the sewing coop learn how to make mens' pants and long sleeve shirts, and womens' blouses in order to increase their business. We then proposed the idea to Rimrock church and they decided to send a team down to help Ricardo and Asiento Viejo in the areas they needed.

I spent my time with the 13 women and teenage girls. I knew nothing really about sewing. I had taken a sewing class in 7th grade, so at least I was familiar with some things. There were two women (Michelle and Carla) from Rimrock that were teaching the women, but only one knew Spanish, so I translated for Michelle. This time was amazing for me because I have not had the experience to spend time with a group of Nicaraguan women. I have found that women do not gather together for fellowship in the countryside. The women mainly stay in their houses and occasionally will visit a neighbor, but never plan an activity so all the women can get together. I really enjoyed the time joking with the women, sharing stories and getting to know the women of Pastor Ricardo's church better. The thing that I enjoyed the most about the sewing group was that it was made up of all age groups (teenagers-70 year old women). The teens were the daughters of the 6 women in the coop, who wanted to learn how to sew. The interaction between the young and old was interesting to watch...they both helped each other. The older were teaching the younger to sew and younger were helping the older ones thread the machines because their eye sight was not the best or teaching them how to use the electric sewing machine.

While I was spending my time with the women there was also a vet training going on. Five local technicians were trained how to give vaccinations, castrate and general first aid on the livestock. Ricardo and his son Able were amoung the vet techs as well as two young women. It sounded like the trainings went well and it was a good time of fellowship between the Nicaraguans and the North Americans. In addition to this, Jori and Megan, two teenage youth from Rimrock, were playing with the kids. They played games like soccer volleyball, jumped rope, made balloon animals and did face painting with the kids. Neither of them spoke Spanish very well, but they formed some amazing relationship with the kids.

Water

What would you do if you went to your kitchen faucet and no water came out? You would probably go to another faucet in the house to see if the water was out. Your next step would be to call the water utility to find out what is going on. Needless to say you would feel a bit put out and frustrated that you can't shower when you want to, or do laundry you had planned on doing or clean the floors or make a meal.

Nicaraguans live with water outages on a daily basis. There are times they will get up in the middle of the night in order to wash their clothes (by hand) because the water is only on at night. Or they will get up earlier then they had planned on in order to shower. Water outages happen through out the country and sometimes the outages are on a schedule, but other times there is no warning. The one thing that is consistent is that the water is not always consistent, so people store water in barrels, buckets or whatever they can in order to have enough water. People pay their utility bills, but there just isn’t enough water to go around for everyone. There is also no one to complain to. In the states people would be infuriated if they were paying their bills and still had water outages. People here don’t have that luxury…it is just the way life is here. They are happy they at least have access to water.

When we lived in Managua the water was hardly ever off, but several blocks away from where we lived we knew of people who would be without water all day. Since living in Teustepe we understand what it is like to live life with inconsistent water outages. At first it seemed like there was a schedule…no water from 8am-noon then water on until 5, the water would then be off until midnight. Then we had several days where the water was out from 6am-midnight. The next day the water was on we filled up some buckets we don’t normally use because they don’t have lids, but the water was on all day and for the days following. There was one time Seth woke up at 2am because he heard the water running (we left the shower on). At that time he filled all of our water storage containers and did dishes; then he heard the neighbor up washing clothes (by hand). This week our water has hardly been off. We have had water all day and it goes off around 6ish until 10ish.

So we have learned when the water is on fill up all the storage containers in order to be prepared. We store enough water to do dishes, shower, cook, flush the toilet (we use the motto, if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down), but not enough to do laundry or clean the floors. Therefore, when the water is on we have to do laundry and wash the floors. Our water is on this morning, so this is what a typical morning looks like: Filling all of our containers.

Our filter stores drinking and cooking water.

Pitchers full of drinking water.

Water for washing dishes.

Barrel for bathing and flushing the toilet.

Bucket showering, use the red bowl, you get the idea.

The next time you get a glass of water from your faucet, or shower, or wash clothes when you want to I hope you will be reminded of how water is a precious commodity and to be wise in it's use.

Update on Ricardo's Well

We thought you may be wondering whatever happened to the well that Ricardo was digging. Just to remind for everyone, he had a vision from God about where he would find water on his land, so he began digging.
Well 11 months later his sons and him are still digging with a chisel. They are currently at 80 feet, but have found some water. They are getting 4-5 gallon buckets of water a day. For some of you it may seem like God has not been faithful because that is not enough water. Ricardo believes God will help them discover the larger vein of water that he saw in his vision.

Have you ever wondered, how do the men get in and out of the well to dig? It is not an easy task. They are lowered down by a rope with a pulley (it looks somewhat like repelling) and then work for half the day until lunch is brought from their mother or wife. They then return chiseling away at rock for the afternoon. When it is time to get out the rope the person ties the rope around his waist as a harness and then the person is pulled up. Here is what it looks like:

What Do We Do?

I realized that I have not written recently about our work here in Nicaragua. I tend to write more about the unusual things we have done, but I think it is time to update on our day to day lives. Well, as I have stated before we are living in Teustepe where we spend most of our time, we still have to go to Managua at times for meetings or when groups come. Teustepe is a small town, but big enough not to know everyone, so we are often stared at. It is very common for white people or anyone that looks different to get stared at, which is something that we will never be used to. .

Work wise...we still help some with office work, but from our home in Teustepe. Seth is still helping to write grants for projects. I am still organizing the groups that come from the states to see AsoFenix projects as well as planning for and organizing the intern. Right now we have 4 Swedish interns here for 6 months. The interns generally live in the communities working on small projects or following up on projects and getting to know what life is like in the countryside. We have been working on writing and doing base line surveys before we do projects, so we have something to compare to the results.

Recently I have not done any health trainings nor have we done any trainings in the schools but this will be changing. The focus our last year is to be in the communities more consistently to help with committee organization, project follow up and providing various trainings in the areas of health, nutrition, reforestation, sustainable agriculture and teaching how to use a computer to some of the youth. In addition to this we will continue to help our partner with renewable energy projects. In our time in Nicaragua we have been apart of installing

• a potable water system (picture on the left)
  
• a micro hydro turbine, solar panels and wind turbines to provide energy to isolated communities
• biodigestors for cooking
• drip irrigation systems (picture on the right)
  

We enjoy our work and look forward to being able to be in the communities more frequently. We are also grateful we are able to support AsoFenix.

Delight in the Little Things in Life...Like the Beach

The beginning of September we had the opportunity to get away for the weekend enjoying one of our favorite things...the beach. Nicaragua is not known for the best beaches, but when your from a land locked state far from any beach, they are not too bad. We went to our favorite beach area, San Juan del Sur, about a 3 hour bus ride south of Managua. The beach in the town of San Juan del Sur is not the prettiest, but there are many beaches near there that are absolutely gorgeous.

Our friend, Beth, from MCC went with us...she likes the beach as much as we do. We spent the days enjoying the water and the sun and at night we enjoyed good food and a little bit of the night life. The first night we were there we went to a a place on the beach that had a bonfire, a fire thrower and a live band...we mainly went to see the fire thrower. We saw the fire thrower, but he only did it for 5 minutes, so it was not as exciting as we had anticipated. However, it was nice to sit on the beach with the cool ocean breeze listening to live music.

We spent one day at a nice pool that overlooks San Juan del Sur...it was a fun relaxing day. Although my favorite day was our last day. We took a water taxi to spend the day at a beach north of San Juan del Sur called Majagual. We saw a secluded beach in the distance that we decided to walk to called Florcita. The walk included scaling some rocks to get around bends. Once we finally arrived to Florcita, the sand was white, the water was crystal clear (you could see your feet while in chest deep water) and we were the only ones on the beach...it was heaven. After being there for several hours the tide began to rise, so we decided we should get back to the other beach since we knew there was one section that would be difficult to pass if the tide was too high...you can see it was a bit difficult the way it was. We spent the rest of the day enjoying the ocean at the other beach, which was beautiful and had crystal clear water it just had larger waves.

The boat returned in the late afternoon to take us back to San Juan del Sur. The driver had decided to do some fishing on the way back because he saw birds swarming and diving for fish, so he knew there were schools of fish in the area. So, we got the experience of watching Nicaraguans fishing...as you can see in the picture there is no pole. Once enough fish were caught we began to head back when we saw (what I can only imagine as extremely rare) turtles mating. Yeah, I said mating and on the surface of the water. Seth and I have seen a turtle laying eggs, a baby turtle and snorkeled with turtles, but this was a new experience all together. The turtles were not scared of the boat (I am sure because they were busy), so we were able to take several pictures and Beth got a video. They finished and swam deep into the ocean, so we proceeded back to the bay. In the distance we saw another turtle swimming, but it was scared off quickly once the boat got too close. Once we got back to the beach at San Juan del Sur we enjoyed watching the sunset because it made for a perfect ending to a glorious day.

We have moved

Well we moved to Teustepe, a town 90 km northeast from Managua, the beginning of August. However, we have not been living in Teustepe full time because we had some work things to finish up in Managua before fully relocating. From here on out we should mainly be in Teustepe with a few trips a month to Managua. For those of you that need a recap, we moved to Teustepe in order to be closer to the communities we work in with AsoFenix; more or less our work has changed focus a little. We will be focusing our last year mostly on community development and less on office work (which we had been doing a lot of in Managua the last year). We are excited to see how God uses us in our new roles and in our new home.

Many people have wanted to see pictures of our house, so enjoy the tour. (The tour only includes the rooms that are fully furnished.)

The entrance into the living room (yep, that is our motorbike):

Our living room:

Our kitchen:

A view of the backyard from the kitchen:

Our cozy little breakfast nook just off of the living room:

Our bathroom:

Our workout room (just of the breakfast nook):

Our bedroom (just off of the workout room):

The backyard from our bedroom:

to see more pictures of our new home check out our photo website.

Bats, Caves and A Volcano

Last Saturday night we took the night tour at Masaya Volcano, which is 20 minutes south of Managua. A friend of ours from AsoFenix, Dave, invited us to join him and his friends on the tour and since we had never done it we thought why not. We have visited the volcano during the day several times. There are four craters, but only one is active and constantly emits sulfur gas. The tour starts before it gets dark, so we saw the volcano in the day time as well as hiked to various lookouts of the craters. As it started to get dark we headed to the caves that were created by lava flow a long time ago, which bats now inhabit. At this point we were given flash lights and hard hats...which you can see by the picture. While in the cave we saw a lot of bats. All of the guys beside Seth and Dave were scared of the bats, so that was funny because the bats did not bother the two girls in the group. There was one part we went in that had bats swarming the entrance, so we just sat below them, I took several pictures and luckily one turned out. The tour ended back at the active crater where the guide showed us the lava, which was a reddish glow. The crater is 250 meters below the rim, where we were standing, so it was hard to see the lava other than a glow of red in the smoke (I was not able to get a picture). We had a great time and enjoyed doing something new, which was a good reminder for us to continue exploring Nicaragua.

Weekend at the Beach

Last weekend we spent a day and half at a beach(Penitas) on the north west coast of Nicaragua. There is a small fishing village that is slowly developing into a popular tourist destination. It is a two and half hour bus ride, but it was worth the ride. The water was not the best for swimming because the waves were so forceful they knocked us over, but it was beautiful watching the waves. Luckily there is a river that feeds into the ocean and we were able to swim there. We went with a fellow MCCer, Beth, who was the one who came up with the idea to go to the beach. Beth has been in Nicaragua 5 months, so she has not had a lot of time to explore and enjoy the beauty Nicaragua has to offer. We had a wonderful time at the beach and hanging out with Beth.

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY!

It seems weird to think Seth and I have been married that long mainly it is because we don't feel any older then the day we got married (July 9, 1999). However, as we thought back over the past 10 years it was obvious we have been married ten years. We have so many wonderful shared memories and as a couple we have grown, which in turn means our marriage has matured...it is no longer a young marriage. Young marriage is a beautiful thing, don't get me wrong, we had a wonderful time in our first years, but the focus was more superficial. Superficial in the sense that as a couple you are trying to figure out how to make life work together. Whereas, when you have been married longer you have figured out each others quarks more or less and the focus is more on getting to know your spouse better. Every year we learn more and more about each other, partly because we are not the same people we were when we were 21 as we are today. So as we change as individuals that allows us to learn new things about our spouses and also keeps marriage exciting. I have loved being married to Seth and thank God every day for allowing me to find him so early on in my life.
We wanted to do something extra special this year for our anniversary, but we did not have any vacation time left after being in the states, so we are planning a vacation to Belize next year to celebrate our 10th and 11th anniversary's. We still needed to celebrate this important milestone so we went to a movie and dinner at a beautiful restaurant (Intermezzo del Bosque) that overlooks Managua. The restaurant is located on a hill on the outskirts of Managua, so as we were driving there we felt like we stepped into Costa Rica because it was covered in forest and the air was cooler. The food was wonderful, the scenery was beautiful, but the best part was had the entire restaurant to ourselves. It was a wonderful evening to celebrate 10 years of marriage and think about our future.

The Continuation...

Now that everyone is aware why we were in the states for longer than we said I can update you all on our actual time spent in the states.

We spent the first week with my entire family (Brian, Marci, Levi, Andy, Lisa, Connor, Becki, Michael, mom and dad) in Colorado. We spent the first weekend in the mountains and got to see snow...it felt wonderful to be cold. We loved the scenery and being around family, it was a great way to start our time in the states. The rest of the week was rainy and cold, which we were grateful for, but it made it hard to do things outside. We mainly spent time hanging out with family, eating good food, playing games (Lisa loves them) and playing with the nephews (Connor and Levi) as well as celebrating my moms birthday June 4. We also had a lot of fun going to an indoor water park as a family. In addition to my family, my grandmother, aunt Charlotte and cousin Aaron came in from Nebraska to see us for part of the time. It was wonderful to be together as a family, but it went by too fast.

During our time in Denver we caught up with some friends (Andy and Donna, Andrea & Phil and Jodi) as well as Kat, a girl we have known since she was 5 (now 16). Andy and Donna have started a multi-ethnic church in Denver and it was neat to share our experiences with each other and realized we were all going through similar things. It is always great to see Kat and see what a wonderful women she is becoming. We also enjoyed seeing our good friends Phil and Jodi. Phil is Seth's old time friend from elementary school. It was wonderful to talk with them and hang out like old times. We saw Andrea, a friend from ECHO, on our trip to south Dakota since she is living in northern Colorado. We had not seen her in three years, so it was great to catch up with her.
We spent the following two weeks in Rapid City, South Dakota with Seth's family (Kyle, Suz, Carson, Madeline (our new niece), Evan, Roz, mom and dad). It was great to see them, but we also got to see our dog Mani after a year and half...yeah, he remembered us! The weather was cooler and it rained most afternoons, so we had to do outdoor activities in the morning. We went four wheeling, hiking, played golf, I got a pedicure with Suz, Seth got to go climbing/bouldering several times with Evan, Seth also went kayaking and biking with his dad and brothers (Evan and Kyle) and we celebrated Father's Day and Evan's, Suz's and my birthdays. The rest of the time was spent hanging out with family, playing with Carson (nephew) and holding our new niece, Madeline. Of course, Mani went with us every where. Oh yeah, minor detail I had root canal surgery...but all is good now. It was sad to leave, but we were grateful for the extra time. Mani road tripped it back with us to Denver.

The last week was spent with most of my immediate family (minus Andy, Lisa and Connor). During the week we played miniature golf, badminton, croquet, spent time with Mani, went hiking, went to Water World (my favorite water park), had a bond fire at Brian's and Marci's house, roasted marshmallows and ate at several ethnic restaurants (Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Thai, Italian). My sister, Becki, and her husband, Michael, bought their first home and Seth and I got to be the first guests to stay with them, so that was very special. Also, I got to celebrate my birthday with my family. The day started with my sister taking my mom and I to get massages, then we ate lunch and shopped. Later that afternoon we had a BBQ with my family and Phil and Jodi at my parents house and Seth made my favorite desert, Heath Meringue Surprise, yuuuumy! It was a wonderful birthday and a special time with family. By the end of our trip we were ready to come back to Nicaragua, even though it was hard to leave our families and Mani we knew that Nicaragua is where God wanted us to be.


P.S. Check out our photo website to see more pics from our time in the states.