Dear Friends,
How do we describe March in Nicaragua? Hot, dry, dusty, windy, dusty and. . . . busy!
Right on the heels of the St. Paul team (see February newsletter) came our annual family team from 1st Presbyterian Church of Bellevue. This year 4 families made up the team of 14 and it turned out to be another great experience! Having just done a community sports camp/VBS with our previous team we decided to try something a little different with this team. They hosted an all-girls 3 day VBS. We invited 17 girls from our feeding program ministry to participate and had a great time singing, playing, doing funny skits, making kites and getting wet! Without the boys to add their unique behavioral qualities to the camp the girls seemed to really enjoy participating more in the singing and skits. They weren’t as inhibited to play hard, get wet, and be a little more vulnerable. It was special to have the same group of girls for all 3 days so that relationships/friendships could be formed and something a little deeper could take place. The 3-day camp ended with each girl receiving a gift of a beautiful new leather bound Bible inscribed with their name and date. When the girls found out they were going to receive a Bible you could almost hear an audible gasp of surprise and awe. It was very special.
The week with the Bellevue Family team ended with a BIG, BIG event here at El Salero. We finally took ownership of 2 new Toyota Hiace 16 passenger vans. As should have been expected we had to walk through a maze of paperwork and phone calls as we tried and tried to work with the system to have the vans exonerated from taxes (15% - YIKES!). Ultimately we ended up paying the taxes and are now hoping to have them refunded to us some day. However that all works itself out will remain to be seen but for now we are now enjoying the vans and they are getting plenty of use! The very next day we piled the whole Bellevue team into one of the vans for a trip to the market and then the beach. It was great! Great to be all together, great to spend half as much money on fuel (1 vehicle instead of 2), great to have air-conditioning that works well, and great that they’ve actually repaired many of the pot holes on the road to the beach which made driving safer and easier. We’d hardly said goodbye to the Bellevue group before the next group was on our doorstep.
March has become traditionally busy with spring break college teams and this year is no exception. Due to our affiliation with Manna Project International we pretty much consider March to be “Manna Month”. The first Manna team arrived on March 1st from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. They spent a busy week visiting and getting to know the culture and people of Nicaragua and even found some time to do some painting here at the sports center. The UNCW team will actually still be in the country, although spending their last night in another location, when we welcome a team from University of Texas. This team is an Episcopalian affiliated university group of 23!! Whew! It’s a big one! (Those 2 new vans will come in handy!!) They will be spending a week with us and, with several days of work scheduled, we’re hoping they’ll make a serious dent in painting those beams for the basketball court.
The last team in March is another Manna Project team from Worcester State College in Massachusetts. This team, like the others, will be spending time learning about Nicaragua through experiences and activities here at the sports center, over in Cedro Galan at the ministry center visiting La Chureca, the city dump, to visit Manna Project’s child sponsorship program and health center.
We are pleased that we can work with Manna Project to help to provide some great experiences for these college folks. Before the first team left one of the young men expressed his appreciation for what he was able to experience during his week-long visit and sounded very positive about returning to Nicaragua again in the future with possible ministry or Manna Project affiliations.
In closing we wanted to share some personal news. On March 7th we received the sad news that Kathy’s mom, Helen Lower, passed away after a brief illness – a serious infection that quickly took her life. The last couple of years of her life she battled dementia and it was hard to watch the “real Helen” slowly slip away. Even as recently as Christmas, however, Kathy was able to bring out that sparkle in her eyes and make her laugh. While she couldn’t communicate well it was evident that she still knew about the love of her Lord and Savior. Many times before dementia took away her ability to communicate clearly she told us that she just loved living at the Hearthstone and that the only better place would be in heaven. We are so sad to see her go but know that she is rejoicing in the presence of God.
Kathy will be traveling up to Washington state to be with her family and to plan the memorial service with her brothers and sister and Halle will follow to attend the service. Please keep us in your prayers as it is difficult to be away from our ministry at this busy time of year. Thank you.