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.