Last week my team in Nicaragua split up again and my half went to the other side of Ometepe to a town called Balgüe. While I knew that Nicaragua was a developing nation, I don’t know if what that meant really registered until this past week. Pretty much every house has dirt floors and a tin roof, pigs stumble into soccer games, and…there’s no ATM. I know, right? But Balgüe is also a place where everyone knows each other and the community pulls together for the common good. The men in the town have been working to dig a trench to stop the houses from flooding,...

Our plan this week was to visit the schools in the morning to sing and pray for the kids. Unfortunately, this week is vacation for all Nicaragua schools so that plan changed. Instead of going to the schools, I talked with the housekeeper at the house we are staying. It was a great conversation about recipes, God, her children, and her life. She taught me about "ticos" (people who live in costs rica) and I picked up on country rivalries between the neighbors. I got the recipes to make pollo en salsa. (Chicken with sauce), guiso de pipian (a creamed squash dish), carne soya (soy...

This week I was assigned work in the garden here at Cicrin. We’d had a garden a couple of times when I was younger, a patch of ground about 8ft by 8ft in my backyard, so I figured I pretty much knew all there was to know about gardening. You dig a few holes, pop in a few seeds, cover them up, sprinkle a little water, and let nature take its course, no? No. Not in Nicaragua, anyway. And certainly not when the garden covers more land than a little league baseball field. Here, it looks a lot more like: hack down weeds with a machete, cut more weeds with a hoe, pull up any remaining...

Extreme poverty in third world countries is something we hear about occasionally in the US. Because we don't have to see it, it doesn't generally bother us. During some recent house visits, we saw extreme poverty. A person's whole life can be seen with a family photo on the wall, a picture of Winnie the Pooh, some cracked plastic chairs, and a radio. The walls were sticks or pieces of wood with gaps two inch gaps between them. Bathrooms walls are created with tarps. I guess it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "the walls are paper thin". Most people here live off...

This week of travel was a week of first time experiences:  My first time having a volcano in my back yard, my first time hiking that volcano, my first time having fried pancakes, my first time tying food up to keep the ants out instead of the bears, my first time seeing pigs in a soccer field, my first time seeing a monkey in the jungle, my first time being afraid I was lost in the jungle, my first time seeing an outdoor waiting room at the free socialist health care clinic, my first time translating a testimony, and my first time seeing someone be saved through a house visit.  It...

This week we have spent each morning with makeup of sweat and dirt. It is a good time, even if the girl's house has their favorite song on repeat (and repeat again, again, and again). We really wish that we could use the weeds for our dinner. It might be possible to feed the whole island.  Here is Ometepe, plants grow bigger and faster. Between the heat and the rain, it is prime territory to grow. This mean that great fruits and vegetable can be grown here, as well as great weeds. CICRIN has a big garden that is utilized for cooking. We have had some great fruit a couple of...