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.