NICARAGUA TRIP DIARY – April 9, 2007:
Most of our team had already left on Good Friday, so there were only nine of us traveling on Monday, April 9. Eight of us met in Grand Rapids and flew out at 12:45, and the ninth – Pastor Steve LaLone from Cadillac First – flew alone a couple of hours later. The flights were all good, and everyone arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica, safely – and all of our luggage, too!
After clearing immigration and customs, we went outside and found the driver who was meeting us to take us to SENDAS – the Nazarene Seminary for Central America. We had to wait for Steve to arrive – his flight got in an hour later than ours – but by 9:30 local time we were on our way to SENDAS. (Costa Rica and Nicaragua are 2 hours behind Michigan time) The trip took about 45 minutes. I don’t know about the ladies, but it only took about 20 minutes for the men to be fast asleep!
This morning, our driver is meeting us at 7:00 a.m. to begin the journey north to Nicaragua. We will travel several hours by bus, and then just south of the border we will get on a river boat which will take us up into Nicaragua and the town of San Carlos, where we will be based during our trip. We hope to have some good pictures of today’s trip – apparently, there is some beautiful scenery on our route!
April 10:Well, I was right – there was beautiful scenery en route! We started from SENDAS at 7:00 a.m., heading north for the town of Los Chiles, near the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. We made several stops along the way – at a coffee plantation, a waterfall, and at a place called “Las Iguanas” which, as you might imagine, had a lot of iguanas! We got a lot of neat photos of these different scenes; hopefully, we’ll be able to forward some of them to be posted during the trip.
In Los Chiles, we stopped for lunch before boarding a river boat to travel across the border to San Carlos. We also met Feliciano Perez, the District Superintendent for the Nicaragua Sur Este District. This is the newest pioneer district in Nicaragua. Feliciano assisted us with getting our exit visas from Costa Rica immigration in Los Chiles, so we could proceed to leave the country.
Along the river, we saw a lot of neat wildlife: caimans (small alligators); lots of birds; and monkeys. Again, we took plenty of photos. If things work out okay with internet access, some of them will be coming along with these notes. If not, look for them after we get back.
After about a half-hour on the river, we crossed into Nicaragua and had to stop at a small army post to give them our names and passport numbers. We proceeded the rest of the way to San Carlos, where we had to go through immigration and customs for our entry into Nicaragua. Dennis Hamilton and Cam Cavitt were waiting for us – with a bus – and once we cleared customs, we were ready to head out for our lodging and for the District Center, which serves as our headquarters here. We dropped our luggage off at the hostel where most of us are staying, and then went to the District Center for dinner, fellowship, and a brief orientation session. It was good for us to finally meet up with the rest of the team!
One thing that will take some adjustment is the fact that it gets dark around 6:30 p.m. here. This is because both Nicaragua and Costa Rica are on what we call Mountain Time, but they are actually as far east as our Eastern Time Zone! (Think of daylight savings time, but two hours in reverse!) Of course, that means that it also gets light early – so we’ll probably be up around 5:00 a.m.! As I’m writing this, it’s only 9:30, but everyone has already headed off for bed. We’ll be calling lights out soon, too, but we’re still organizing stuff and unpacking for our stay. We’ll be here for about 10 days – I think we’re leaving here on the morning of April 20 to head back down to Costa Rica. We fly out of San Jose, Costa Rica at about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 22.
Tomorrow, we head to the work site at the Jerusalem Church of the Nazarene. The other members of the team were there today, doing some concrete work. There is a little more of that to be done, and then I think we’ll be doing cement block work. We are also planning to do a Vacation Bible School at the church. The interesting thing is that their school days are split – the younger children go to school in the morning, and the older children in the afternoon. We’ll have to figure out some way to work them all in!
Thank you all for your prayers for our safe travel. Everyone made it here just fine, and we are all excited about what God is going to do in us and through us while we’re here. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. There are so many things that might happen while in a foreign country, so we are trusting in God to keep us safe and healthy. I’ll write more tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to send these notes along throughout the trip!
April 11:Today was our first day on the worksite. We moved cinder block, mixed concrete, and put together rebar for the walls of the church. It was hot and humid, so we stayed in the shade as much as possible, and drank lots of water! Luckily, there is a small store which sells cokes right next to the church site, so we were giving the lady who runs the store plenty of business!
Some of our team members stayed at the district center, to organize Bible School materials and work on some of the songs. The Bible School will take place out at the same church that we are helping to build, so all of the team will be out at that site together next week.
The teen boys who are part of our group went with Eliezar, who is the son of the district superintendent Feliciano, to a school out near the worksite. They played a game of soccer against the school children, and the final score was 15-1. No, our boys did not win! They did have fun, though.
I’m putting together a folder of some pictures that I hope to be able to send along with these notes. There will probably only be a few pictures in each folder, so I can make sure that they will make it through with my e-mail. I may not have extensive comments each day, because “regular” work days will probably be pretty much the same. I’ll probably keep my comments to anything unusual or different that happens.
Keep praying for us! So far, everyone is healthy, happy, and in good spirits. God is good!
April 12:Another day, another cinder block! The crew that headed out to the worksite today was involved in three tasks: assisting the local people with putting up cinder block walls, putting together rebar, and breaking up a big pile of clay to be used as fill to level out the floor of the new building. Although I don’t want to over-generalize, the younger backs seemed to be involved in taking on the dirt pile with picks and shovels, the middle-aged group was involved in mixing mortar and handing up cinder blocks to the block-layers, and the more experienced group was working on rebar. It ended up being a rather short work day for us – we were a bit late in leaving for the worksite this morning, and our work day was cut a bit short by a thunderstorm that rolled in. Rainy season in Nicaragua usually begins around the first of May, but it appears that it has started early this year! We have had a bit of rain every day since we’ve been here; nothing dangerous, but rain nonetheless.
Part of our team went into town to visit a hospital and clinic, and to deliver some medical supplies. The general consensus was that the facility was clean, and that the people there do a very good job with the resources they have available. Infant mortality rates are a large concern, as they are in many parts of the third world.
We are looking forward to a couple of days off this weekend – some shopping in town, and visiting one of the local churches. The group who left last Friday were able to worship in Costa Rica on Sunday, but it will be a new experience for the nine of us who arrived Monday night.
It’s hard to believe that it’s already Thursday! It’s always interesting to me how different life is when we are not enslaved to a clock or a calendar. Although the physical aspect of our work may be hard, it is very relaxing to live according to a different type of schedule than most of us deal with at home. (Of course, part of that relates to the fact that it gets dark at about 6:00 p.m. – I’m writing this at just before 6, and it is definitely dusk moving into night now.) With no TV or internet, there is not much to keep us up past 9, so I’m getting more sleep than I ever do at home! However, some people are not sleeping as well, due to the “night sounds” – we have several roosters next door to the community center where many of us are staying, and there are howler monkeys and a rooster near the district center where the rest of the team is staying. In fact, there was even a bat that came into the district center last night before that group went to sleep. You’ve heard the old phrase, “Blind as a bat”? Well, it’s true – this bat flew right into one of the ceiling fans!
It appears that I will be getting a chance to try to send these notes, and some photos, over the internet in the next couple of days. Hopefully, some of you will be reading this by Saturday night!
April 13:Today was a good day at the work site – we worked on several projects again. Some of us were helping to carry block and mortar for the block-layers; others were wiring rebar together; others were painting some metal beams for the inside of the church building; and others were helping out on a number of other tasks. By 2:00, many of the team members were praying for another rain storm, so we could quit! It is not incredibly hot, in terms of temperature, but the humidity is very high. It doesn’t take me 15 minutes at the worksite before my shirt is just soaked with sweat.
The VBS crew was gearing up for the start of Bible school on Monday. Next week, all of the team will be packing up and going out to the jobsite together, since the VBS will also be out there. It will be the first chance for many of them to see the jobsite, and to experience the one-hour bus ride from the district center to the jobsite.
At lunchtime today, one of our bus drivers brought around some of his lunch to share with us. We have tried to share with them this week, but most of our food is not really to their liking. He brought us a small container of turtle stew – turtle meat, corn meal, and some cheese and spices. Several of us tried it, and I thought it was very good. If it were wrapped inside a tortilla, it would taste just like a chicken quesadilla from one of our Mexican restaurants.
This afternoon, as we were getting ready to leave, we told Feliciano, the district superintendent, that we would not be working on Saturday. He said that he didn’t know that we were Seventh-Day Adventists!
Saturday, we will be going into town to do some shopping and sight-seeing. Hopefully, I will be able to get to the internet café and send all of these notes and photos for the website. Saturday night, some of the ladies from the Nazarene church will be cooking dinner for us. Our group has been doing all of our cooking – and they’re doing a wonderful job – but it will be interesting to have an authentic Nicaraguan dinner. I’ll have a full report in Saturday’s notes!
Pastor Rick