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p2a: Nicaragua
part 1
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Nicaragua
Part 1 To my teammates (and
Carla/Nicolas/Hazel/Josuel/etc once you find this) - please
please please email me with corrections, both for names and
stories - i didn't take any notes, and doubt my memory is
perfect.
Arrival
Tip-Top Pollo! 
English church at the missionary hostel/school
loading up in flaming purple 
Spanish church - largest i'd ever seen
arrival at the Frists for lunch 
The Frists
| Lisa's parents, and our
primary contacts. Mr. Frist works mostly on
economic development around Managua (the capital). They also tend to offer the
occasional material support to local
Christians...such as the importation of 12
bushy-tailed Princetonians... |
first glimpse of our kids 
.
| We had intended on stopping
by Sunday afternoon simply to distribute invitations
in the community, in the hopes of having some kids
show up for the Vacation Bible School on
Monday. Except we stepped off the bus to find
50+ kids already sitting there waiting for us,
complete with a balloon arch and big welcome
sign. So we played Pato-Pato-Pollo (duck duck
cooked-chicken...hey...YOU try to translate
"goose" on the fly) and various other
group games until it was time to head back to the
hostel. |
balloons
Planning
hi mom! (home away from home)
building the ark 
and Noah
and Noah's...err...basketball? 
inflated
craft preparation 
| Our craft team was
unbelievable - they stayed up many a night long
after we'd all crashed busily chopping, sorting and gluing.
Everything had to be just right, because the throngs
of teeming children only gave us about 10 seconds
between "Hurray crafts!" and "Hey how
come he got six beads and I only got five? I want
six beads too give me more beads now!"
Kudos, crafts team.
|
Bendiganos, Señor...
Monday
Wilson
| Our driver. Wilson,
along with several other drivers, work for the
Christian school/missionary hostel where we
stayed. He's been working on his automobile
maintenance skills, and might have a slightly more
lucrative career as a mechanic in the future.
Go Wilson. He lived near the town where we
worked, apparently with two roughly teenage kids,
whom we never got to meet. |
on the wall 
Marizza
.
| Marizza/Maritza/Maritsa (??)
is one of the local kids who spend the most time
with Carla and Nicolas. She's 15, Christian
(apparently because of Carla and Nicolas, although I
can't confirm that), somewhere in the midst of high
school, and a ball of energy. Katie got to
know her the most, so you'll have to talk her if you
want gossip. Anyway - we had lots of fun
working and playing with Marizza, and easily as much
teasing her - especially, of course, about certain
boys. |
highs and lows
basketball
sorry wade
yellow
thirsty
crafts (last night in action)
fútbol
well-earned ice cream & brownies
Tuesday

making cement stakes 
cement 
Nicolas
Nicolas's testimony, and the
first perspective on the family:
- Did missionary work as a
young adult, but never really submitted himself
to the will of God - as he would put it, he was
a believer, but not a disciple
- Got caught up with the
Sandinistas in the 80's, resulting in something
of an "enfermidad espiritual" -
perhaps best rendered in English as
"growing cold."
- Married Carla, who has
apparently always been spiritually inclined, and
something of a strong-willed woman. Call
her a good influence.
- Finished his engineering
degree in some sort of Ecology field; perhaps
Agricultural Engineering?
- Had the first of what he
calls his wake-up calls out on the field one
day, when one of the massive tree-cutting saws
swung out and caught his leg - normally
resulting in total amputation, but he just got a
deep cut and a scar; shrugged it off though.
- Had his second when,
about 80 feet from his house one December, a
taxi smashed into his motorcycle (which was as
big as he was, as he was fond of pointing out)
and sent him flying through the air. The
impact with the taxi shattered his leg, throwing
his tibia 30 cm out of position (which we can
only assume means sticking out, unless he meant
30mm, which i doubt from the rest of the story)
and completely shattering his patella; the first
(public) hospital wouldn't treat him (they
didn't like his insurance), so he got
transferred to a military hospital; as it had
now been ~5 hours since the accident, things
were pretty rough. They decided just to
focus on saving his life, and wait until he was
stabilized to work on his leg (which,
presumably, would have to be amputated).
Anyway, the succeeded in stabilizing him, and
set an appointment for several days later to see
if anything could be salvaged from his
leg. While he was waiting for that,
though, he kept feeling the strangest
encouragement, like a voice, saying 'wait for
Christmas, i have a gift.' The night of
Christmas, he dreamed that there were hands
holding his leg, one around the shin and one
around his thigh, and he could hear the sounds
of crunching bones, "like a cat chewing on
a mouse," as he put it. He woke in
the middle of it, waving his hands in thin air,
trying to catch the arms, much to the surprise
of Carla. He then prayed that God would
finish whatever He was doing, and fell asleep -
apparently the first deep sleep he'd had since
the accident. When they went to the
previously scheduled appointment, the x-rays
showed the bones completely shattered - no
change; which was no surprise to the atheist
Sandinista doctor whom he'd told about the
dream. The next day, though, when they
opened up his knee to take a look, they were
shocked to find every last shattered piece
perfectly in place -- yes, broken into many
pieces, but somehow all perfectly aligned for
healing, as if the surgery had already been
completed, and far beyond what they thought
they'd be able to do. Three months later
he was back at work and riding his motorcycle
again (brave man!).
- His third wake-up call
came when he was riding his motorcycle home late
one night, and felt a bump on the road; he
looked back and saw nothing, but it bothered
him, so he checked in a the police station in
the next town to see if there had been any
strange reports; it continued weighing on him as
he rode home, so he kept checking in, and left
his contact information; eventually word came
back - and, since his name was now on file, he
was accused of hitting an old man - and not just
any old man, but the father of one of the police
chiefs. He was summarily thrown in
prison. While he was working on getting
all properly depressed for a looooong stay in a
Nicaraguan prison, he felt strongly called to
tell random people that God still loved them and
offered them forgiveness - meaning not
innocents, but the rapists and murderers in his
hallway. He was flabbergasted, but found
that when he actually obeyed, these men
invariably either recommitted their lives to
Christ, or believed for the first time - to the
point that they nicknamed him 'the Pastor,' and
he counted easily 17-20 conversions. After
a while, as his wife worked the legal system
from the outside (and the Sandinistas lost their
hold on the country) the order came for his
release - except he was first transferred to
another prison, near Granada. He never
really figured out why; except that the stream
of conversions continued there as well.
- So....as he got out of
prison he found his priorities had rather
reversed - rather than having God as some random
belief, he had personally witnessed the tangible
miracles which he hadn't previously thought
possible in the present day - both in impossible
physical healing, and in mass conversions among
the people he would have that least
likely. He was now willing to follow God,
no matter what that might mean - as he puts it
(mentioned above), he had become a disciple
instead of a mere believer. He and Carla
decided change was in order, so he quit his job
and moved their family from their comfortable
urban home to a little shack on a hill in a
depressed countryside community.
- As they worked to expand
their new house and rebuild their family life,
they began to notice the dozens and dozens of
children being neglected in the area...and, so
he found his ministry.
|
more crafts
toro
at my side
on the truck
boys
collapse
quiet
 |
this gallery photographed with the proverbial
brick - Kodak DC3200
max print size is 4'x6'
[ go
to part 2 ] |
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