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.