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Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure

a travel blog by Shane Perry

As of early August 2008 Shane and Vanessa decided to head out and see what the rest of the world was like. The following is a breakdown of the highlights of our trip to Nicaragua. Posts should be about every Monday. (That's when we can access the internet)

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Matagalpa Assembly

Matagalpa, Nicaragua

The CA in Matagalpa was a real treat. There are something like 30 special pioneers in the circuit, I'm not sure whether or not the missionaries are considered special pioneers or not but there were 6 of them at the assembly as well. It was great to see them in action. Each of them had parts on the assembly with the exception of on of the missionary sisters and all of them were working hard with various assignments.

The location of the assembly is a small basket ball arena. The bathroom situation for almost 900 people was quite interesting. There are 2 bathrooms. (In the picture above it's the small shed on the right against the far wall, yep that's all of them) The mens restroom is only a small drain, probably 1-2 inches in diameter, so there are signs posted everywhere that you should only urinate there. However, Andrew, a brother in our congregation assigned to cleaning, was forced to handle the actions of a brother that evidently could not read the signs posted all over the little room. I hope that describes the situation without actually spelling it out for you. But I guess, in defense of the brother, if you've gotta go you've gotta go. This story really highlights some of the unique situations that come up here that likely wouldn't happen at home.

Another quite interesting thing involved the location of the assembly. It's basically a steel framed structure with no complete walls. This is fine in many places but Nica is special. I don't know if it's because of a lack of media exposure or what but people drive around here blasting advertisements about everything. Think sound cars in the JV book. They talk about people dying that day, and then subsequently name the 10+ names of the people that paid for the sound car to declare it. Quite interesting. Or sometimes it's just an advertisement to go somewhere or some religious proclamation, etc. The problem at the assembly is that because there are no complete walls, and the street is just on the other side of the small half high walls, the sound at the assembly is oftentimes in competition with the speaker. Something I found quite unexpected. I've never been to an assembly where the speaker was drowned out by ambient noise. Makes you appreciate what we have in the states.

I've included some pictures and perhaps Vanessa will blog a bit later.

permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 11, 2008 from Matagalpa, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged Matagalpa, CircuitAssembly, SoundCar and Toilet
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Jinotega

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Our House and Our Street

So we've arrived in Jinotega and have been crazy busy for the last several days. With the visit of both the C.O. and the D.O. there have been meetings every night. I feel real compassion for our one elder in the congregation, he has to be stressing about the workload. I'll include more about our traveling overseers in the next post.

Field service has been our bread and butter up till today. 9 out of 10 doors that I've talked at I've had good calls. Most of the people are quite friendly about our terrible Spanish and help us along. We do lots of business witnessing. You just go into the store, ask for the owner, and then hit your presentation. This is not something that we do in Scottsville very often and so I was a bit hesitant at first but the territory is quite used to it. This morning I went with another brother into a clinic and we asked to speak to the doctor. We wound through the little compound into the doctors office, (by the way, the place was called something like “The New Day Christian Clinic”, I have no idea what religion they were, so I was thinking, “Yikes! What's going to happen here?”) when we arrived in her office the personnel of the entire office entered as well. This was in total 7 persons. The brother I was with spoke for about 5 minutes, using several scriptures, about the time when all doctors will be out of jobs. I'm not sure if that's taking personal interest or knocking the job of the poor doctor, but it went well enough and the brother didn't have enough literature for everyone in the office. He featured the brochure about God permitting suffering and it seemed to go over quite well. Wonderful huh? I can't wait until we're able to communicate effectively to the people in the field and start adapting our presentations.

I could go on with experiences but I thought you also might like to see our house. Our house is, I would say, average for the city of Jinotega. We have a garage in our kitchen. I know it sounds weird but it's the way it is, and it works great for us! Since we have no car, this means we have a large space in the front of our house. Andrew, the brother who lived in the place shortly before us, utilized this space for ping pong.
Thus, the large table in the front doubles as our kitchen table/study area and, when things get slow for us, a ping pong table. We could probably sit 12-15 people at the table at one time! I'm sure we'll make good use of it. The house has two rooms, and two bathrooms, only one has a hot shower so if you come to visit you we'll have to arm wrestle to see who gets that one! :)

Our street is quite nice and quiet by Nica standards. Most walls don't meet the ceiling in your house so you hear everything outside. Almost directly across the street we have a small Evangelical church. This is the equivalent to the Pentecostals in the U.S. So lots of singing takes place with regularity here. However, most of this takes place while we're away so it's not too bad. You have to put up with crazy barking dogs everywhere, someone behind our house has a goat and some roosters, and you hear all the conversations outside. Why, then, can we say it's quiet? Most noise comes from the traffic going down the street. You fail to realize how noisy vehicle are in the states since most times you're either in one, and even old cheap cars have some noise barrier, or you're inside a building and you see them passing by. Nearly everything is a diesel, and most vehicles have no exhaust, add these two together and you get, LOUD NOISE! We live on a side street and it seems most of our neighbors don't have vehicles either. So it's nice and quiet. For the ambient noise, (I.e. the aforementioned dogs, goats, roosters, neighbors with marital problems, etc.) we sleep with ear plugs and hope for the best. That's all for now, stay tuned I'll post some more on our C.O. And D.O. next week! These brothers are incredible!




permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 14, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged House and Jinotega
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Our CO and DO

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Today has been the first day that we've had off since we landed here and man have we needed it! We've completed some much needed house work and slept away the rest of it. Is this what having a day off a week is really like? On a sad note that also means that yesterday was the final day of our visit with the traveling overseer. Where to begin? First off, because of the governmental situation a few years ago, Nica doesn't quite have the years in the truth that other countries like the U.S. Or Mexico have. For this reason there are not many local overseers here. For instance, our district (there are two in the country currently) has something like 20 circuits. Of the 20 only 4 or 5 have C.O.'s from Nicaragua. The vast majority are from Mexico. I found it interesting that there is only one brother from Gilead that is a C.O. In our circuit. This is of interest because we have nearly 100 Gilead trained missionaries in the country. I asked the D.O. And his wife why this was because I always thought that the Gilead training would enable more of those brothers to be used in this work. The D.O.'s wife indicated that the health of the missionaries limits them from doing the work here. Why health you ask? Well... This is a good link into the challenges faced in the traveling work here.

In the picture above the brother sitting beside me is our single C.O. From Mexico. The couple directly across the table from him is the D.O. And his wife. To give you an idea, the last visit that our congregation had by the C.O. He had malaria. This involves a week of intense fever and other things that I'm sure you can look up on your own. (www.wikipedia.org/malaria) The story goes that this brother still went on with his entire visit while really suffering but didn't miss a meeting for field service or any other of the things involved with his visit. This guy is tough stuff. He's been in the traveling work in Nica for 9 years. Before this he was in Mexico as a traveling overseer for another 9. He has no car, the branch does not supply the brothers with one, and therefore has to travel by bus. Note the picture here. You might find yourself thinking, no problem, this gives him time to sleep and study, etc. Au contraire mon ami! After serving our congregation he was bound for an isolated group that was a 6 hour bus ride north of here. 6 hours!
He says that the buses are made for school children and so therefore get quite uncomfortable quickly. In addition to that, the buses are often times so full that once your seated you can't move. He mentioned that once he was riding along and saw that there was an open container of some fluid above the people in front of him. But he couldn't get to it, and neither could anyone else, and so it fell on top of the passengers. There was no way to move, or to determine who owned the item and so the persons that got wet had no choice but to sit there in the juices until the bus stopped again. He said this was not an unusual situation. There are only 5 congregations in our circuit, the rest are isolated groups waaayyy out in the boonies. So basically, I just described this brothers life.

Our D.O. And his wife are truly wonderful as well. I don't think I've met a D.O. Couple that was as warm as they were in my life. Amazing couple. They have a small apartment in Managua and own a small Nissan 4x4 station wagon. (Eat your heart out Judy!) He has been in the traveling work for something near 20 years and is from Nicaragua. Probably a contributing factor to him being used in that capacity as he was loaded with jokes and stories that, evidently, only Nicaraguans could understand! He has had Malaria 5 times in his service as a traveling brother. He was a real teacher. Full of illustrations and both of these brothers were incredibly effective in the field. One of the brothers, while encountering a self righteous individual who indicated that she could learn nothing from the witnesses anymore, she had surpassed them, was handled in a most interesting way. In stead of just walking away, the brother listened for several minutes as the individual rattled on about how much she knew, blah blah blah, until finally she was done. Then the brother in a very mild mannered way turned to Revelation and indicated how much he too appreciated the deep things as well, and wanted to know her opinion on the first and second death! She was finally speechless and asked for a return visit. I pity the poor brother that has to make that R.V. Can you imagine discussing that in the field ministry on a 2nd call? :)

This is a perspective of our organization that I had never considered in the past. I'm sure the brothers don't get many green handshakes here in a country were few congregations have the money to even own or make payments on Kingdom Halls. But you can tell Jah's blessing on the whole thing. We have around 67 publishers and our attendance on Sunday was 180!!! Can you imagine that? For memorial this small group gets around 300! All this with one elder! There is certainly work to be done here! That's all for now, hope things are going well for you!



permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 18, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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Nessy's First Entry

Jinotega, Nicaragua

It's finally Nessy's turn to write. I want to tell you that I love Nicaragua because every 2 or 3 days a tree ripe fresh mango drops off the neighbors tree that's over our house. It sounds like a bomb when it crashes on the roof, you know the kind of roof that looks like a wavy ruffle chip, and lands in our little patio right outside our back door. The mangoes are small, sweet and perfect.

I also wanted to tell you about a Return Visit that I have and what happened to his family. A few years ago they moved to Jinotega and found a house they wanted to buy that the owners were in a hurry to sell. Which I say house but it's more like an outbuilding that you would see in Buckingham with a dirt floor.

The owners quickly did the paperwork and the family moved in. What they didn't know about the house was that there was a concrete hatch in the floor. The hatch was poorly sealed and what it covered was an old septic tank. The uncle, who was a large man, unknowingly stood on the concrete lid and it collapsed under him. The fumes were so overpowering that before the firefighters could get him out he died. Three of the firefighters that were exposed to the fumes died as well. The Young man telling us the story about his uncle was about 25 years old and after telling us this story he used a local expression that went something like, “what can you do if it's God's will?” Jenny Bloxsom asked if he felt that it was something that God would want. He thought about it and drew the correct conclusion. We showed him James 1:13, 14 and reasoned that it is highly unlikely that God would drown a man in a septic tank to accomplish his will. He did appreciate the thought and is interested in knowing what is God's purpose for the Earth but I'll have to admit that's the first time I've had to reason on something like that!

permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 25, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged House and Mangoes
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Los Rurales (aka the Boonies!)

San Rafael del Norte, Nicaragua

A significant portion of the territory that we have is outside of the small town where we live. For a variety of reasons this type of field work is only done on Thursday's. The majority of the time is spent in the city and its' immediate environs.

We drove on a paved road about 30 minutes North of Jinotega and then headed dead east towards Esteli to get here. The road that we turned on resembled the type of road that you would see in a National Forest or Park designated for only OHV's(not sure what OHV stands for) or 4x4 if you've ever been on one of those. However, instead of being a road that only a handful of people traverse throughout the year, these roads lead to tens of thousands of people. The people in these areas almost exclusively derive their income from agriculture. As you can see here, no tractors, just animal and people power. It's kind of funny, we used to pay to get into Williamsburg to see people living like this, now we get to see it each week in field service for free. Let that be a lesson Jehovah really does provide everything we could want in his service! (Yes, I know it's weird that I pay to see cows working. That's a subject for another day!)

There is little here that is uninhabited which came as quite a surprise to me. For instance in this picture to the left of the service group. Do you see that path? Down there were several houses. There the road was impassible by any vehicle, only animals and feet. I gather that this is the type of territory that this is the territory that is the realm of Special Pioneers. Here in Nicaragua they have a Temporary Special Pioneer program wherein brothers and sisters go out in the sticks and preach to people in surroundings like these. It's an amazing thing and I'm not quite sure if we've got what it takes to make that happen. Many of the friends that do this have no running water or electricity for the duration of the assignment. All I can say is wow that's zeal and long suffering and endurance and faith and.... the list keeps going.

The majority of the people we spoke with in the field can't read and don't own a bible, but they have much respect for it. We spoke with one lady that was on the verge of tears when we read Revelation 21:3-5. But how can you place literature with someone who can't read? In addition, how can we just leave an interested person that we won't get back to in another 2 years if they have no spiritual food to build themselves up? I'm waiting to see how Jehovah handles that situation. I know people DO come into the truth. After all where do the aforementioned isolated groups that the C.O visits come from? Somewhat frustrating for me and when you ask the friends what to do, many just shrug. Of course that could also be that they don't understand a word I'm saying... :) That is a real possibility.

The friends in our congregation really turn out for this. 3 of 5 of the congregations vehicles were in use for this day of field service. The vehicle closest to us is a diesel mini van with a brush guard! Try and find that in the states! (For those who are completely disinterested in vehicles, forgive me :) ) I don't think you could buy that if you wanted to! The brother with the mustache sitting a little left of the white brother in the center everyone calls Panchito. He's probably like 4'8” tall and is constantly making fun of me because of my height and laughing. I have yet to understand one of the jokes but he keeps himself quite amused! That's all for now!

permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 26, 2008 from San Rafael del Norte, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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Hopitality

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

We've been quite busy lately. We managed to take a vacation and go to the ocean in San Juan Del Sur. It's a little beach town that's nice but it had been raining for days and because of that we couldn't really leave the town. Our objective was to go see some large sea turtles laying their eggs but the rivers were too big to cross in our truck so we were stuck in the town. Here's a picture of us in the nicest resort in town. It's called Pelican Eyes, a really nice place. We payed about $6 and got a multi course breakfast here. Really cheap and really nice. The view from our table was amazing.

Before we took off, though, we managed to have some of the local friends in for dinner. We took some of the other friends advice and stuck with traditional Nica food, beans and rice and the not so traditional desert of Chocolate chip cookies. The friends loved the visit, even though we couldn't talk about too much.

It's a family with 3 kids. Leo's (the dad) a farmer and manages to support his family with the money from his dad's farm. The two other girls in the picture are cousins of the mother Blanca here. Vanessa's cookies were going rather slowly, everyone only ate one. About two hours into the visit the power went out, no problem we had candles, interestingly though, when the power came back on there were no cookies to be found. 15-20 cookies disappeared in an instant. Maybe someone needed comfort food.

The family was so thrilled that we had them over they decided to have us over for lunch a couple of days later. We went out to the farm where Leo works and Andrew and I managed to till the soil with their oxen. We're sure they were laughing inside at us, but outside they didn't show it. They treated us like honored guests. Nessy made fresh corn tortillas with the ladies in the kitchen.

And afterward they made us rice and beans to go with it. They served us first. They also offered us cuajada. A soft white cheese made from cow's milk. We've had it, but only cooked in lasagna. Raw it can be hard to digest. So Shane & I passed on the cuajada. But Ryan accepted it graciously. He was starting to get full with a half a plate left. But when you think about how the family feeding you has probably just given you the best of the best of the best of what they have. You gotta cram it in and clean your plate, no matter how much you feel that your belly will burst. And so he did. No, not burst, he cleaned the plate. Everyone was happy. And now we've been invited back for chicken soup. The first time I've ever actually met the chicken before its soup. The guys add, these chickens were pretty rough looking, skinny, bald spots, big stray feathers poking out at awkward angles. In their opinion, they'll be better off as soup.


permalink written by  Shane Perry on September 8, 2008 from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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Having our cake and eating it too!

Jinotega, Nicaragua

So it's been a little over one month here in Nicaragua and just now are we starting to be able to have useful conversations in the ministry. Vanessa and I just completed a second study with a woman named Sobeida. She's in her mid twenties attending a small university here in Jinotega and she has a strong spiritual interest. The problem is not necessarily finding the words to talk to her or to teach, although our teaching is not really complicated which might be for the better, but rather understanding what she says in response to our questions. We end up walking out of the study asking each other what the other thought the student said. It's quite a challenge! I can imagine a conversation going something like this:

Shane: What do you think, how does Jehovah feel about the man that has no legs down the street, does he feel compassion for him?

Student (in Spanish) : The man was probably a sinner and God has been punishing him by taking away his legs... I'm sure this is the case.

Vanessa(smiling sincerely): Very good. That's right! Let's read this scripture....

and on the study goes.... :) I'm really hoping that this is not the case but we're not really sure at this point. Again, if Jehovah can use the rocks we've gotta be worth something.

Things are working out though, we had another family from the congregation over for spaghetti. I think it went over well but they ended up getting something that they hadn't bargained for. Here in Nica, spaghetti consists of noodles butter and onions and that's it. We spent atleast 2 hours on the sauce, cutting tomatoes, cooking, searching for fresh basil in peoples yards. It was a family with 3 kids 16, 13, and 7. They all ate it, but only one serving, nobody went for the parmesan that we brought from the states, they said it was too smelly, and all had small servings. Oh well. We certainly enjoyed it. I guess next time we'll have to go for beans and rice. It's not really different than in the states I guess, most of us only eat the same 5-6 meals over and over again with occasional variation. Afterwards we taught the kids how to play a game called “Greed” with dice. Maybe this wasn't the best game to teach but it is quite fun. The father asked me if they play that type of game in casino's and pool halls in the U.S. :) I think he was a little worried about how involved his kids were getting in the game. I hope we didn't just send some kid down the wrong path in life.

As far as adventure in the ministry we went out again in the rurals to teach and met a really nice woman. Great conversation. We managed to get stuck behind a bean truck that was being loaded, that killed an hour of our field service, and while we were waiting there was a storm rolling in. In comparison to what the folks in VA and TX have been facing it was nothing. I would be a bit frightened to experience that here. However in order to get home we had to cross a river that was about 2/3rds the size of the James by truck. We got to the river and it looked passable so we put the truck in 4 wheel drive and slowly went across. Not a big deal. However, there was another car that was working with us from Jinotega that decided to preach just a little bit longer. They came to the river about 15 minutes later and the river had risen to the point that it was impossible to cross. Those friends had to drive for 4.5 hours to get back home! An hour trip home over a river took more than 4 times that for the others. I'm sorry, but we have waaaaay too much fun in the ministry and it's productive too! We forgot our camera. Sorry guys... Maybe I'll take a picture of it later if we ever get back there again.


permalink written by  Shane Perry on September 15, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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Our Kingdom Hall

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Some have been asking about pictures of our KH and so we thought we would oblige. (I included the icecream man in this one, evidently people buy ice cream at 8:30 on a Sunday morning? :)This is a picture of our Sunday meeting. This day we had around 140 in attendance, again this is with 65ish publishers. The Kingdom Halls down here are all owned by the branch. Which is news to me because in the states aren't the majority of the halls there owned by each congregation? Interesting isn't it? There are 2 likely reasons for this. The first and probably the one that your thinking of right now is that many congregations do no have the means to pay for a hall. Which is probably true. The upper end of housing (I.e. the ones that most need greaters are in) are somewhere between $100 and $150 a month. The majority of the friends do not live in a place like that. A building like the kingdom hall would probably go for around $35000 - $50000. Needless to say that it out of the realm for many congregations to afford here.
A second reason is likely due to the legal system here in Nicaragua. Perhaps there is some advantage to this. Did I mention that about five minutes in to the meeting we lost power? We had no power for the rest of the meeting. The brother who gave the talk was from Spain. The poor guy was sweating the whole time and did a large section on the kingdom of the son of his love. Tough huh? (Are you happy Ryan? There is a picture of you here front and center!)

There are currently two congregations that meet in our hall. Ours has, as I've mentioned before, one elder and about 6 servants counting me. The other has around 80 publishers one elder and one servant. We managed to go to a dinner gathering with some friends with the elder from the other hall visiting. Luis, the elder there, was really trying to draft us over there. There is such a need down here! We'll see how that goes.

It seems the standard here to have an apartment with each hall. If we end up staying here for several months, likely we would end up moving to the apartment. The apartment is about 500 sq feet with a bathroom and a ¾ wall that divides the room. All the chairs here are plastic and cost something like $7 a piece. Does anyone remember how much a chair costs in the states? I do have to admit that the chairs in the states are a bit more comfortable.

We've also had the privilege of hosting a large group of friends from Spain. It's really nice to be a destination that people want to visit. We're having a whole bunch of them over for dinner. It's been nice to have them here because, unlike the local friends, they actually listen to what were saying at the door and help out. I

t can get hard when the householder asks a question and we have no idea what they said. The likely situation here develops while your talking the second witness wanders off, sometimes sitting on the curb, sometimes going off for a drink, most times just staring off into space. We keep thinking that it's just that they don't understand us but when we talk to others it's just the culture here. Take care everyone! If anyone wants to come down here we would be happy to have you. Just send us an email! By the way, Ryan says that there are fire breathing llamas in the mountains here. And it's not safe to go outside after 5 because the llamas try and sell you used trapper keepers. .... I'm not sure what that means.


permalink written by  Shane Perry on September 22, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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Ryan and the Branch

Managua, Nicaragua

Sorry that we missed our last blog post. We've had a bit going on lately. Ryan left and so we escorted him down to the airport to send him off. We certainly enjoyed his company. His send off was really nice. We had to meet with the branch which is about 30 minutes from the airport so we decided to come down with him. Fortunately, we had met with a traveling overseer couple that invited all three of us to stay with them in their apartment the night before he left. I need to express here again that being here is an awesome experience. You're surrounded by tons of theocratic work and incredible people that are doing it way better than you ever could. It reminds you of bethel with very little of the structure. :) For those of you that are structure averse I highly recommend it! So much to learn here!

Here's a picture of their apartment. It's a nice little place, there are two apartments in the building to the left there. Each one of them is a one bedroom, modest size, a great deal smaller than the apartment there in Scottsville, but very nice. The C.O. Joked that they had found the only quite place in all of Nicaragua. They forced us to sleep on their bed and they and Ryan shared the floor in the front room on air mattresses. We stayed up until about midnight telling jokes and then the C.O. Got up at around 5 to prepare for his next day of pioneer school! What hospitality! There names are Dave and Esther Moore from the U.K. We were not able to get a picture of them because we decided to take the pictures in the morning and Esther wouldn't let us. They're a blast to be around and evidently they're good friends with the Tully and Jenny Wrights parents in Lebanon, VA. So there is a chance that you've met them before. Who knows?

The following day after visiting with the Moore's and saying good by to Ryan we headed off to the branch. I was a little bit nervous about getting around Managua because 1.) I hadn't yet occurred to me to get a map. I figured taxis, buses, little red three wheelers, etc. know how to get everywhere so I don't need a map. (In retrospect, I've seen the need to adjust this viewpoint.) 2.) Everybody says that there are many areas in Managua that are quite dangerous, especially for 6'7” white guys wearing a tie. I briefly considered removing my tie and smearing dirt on my face as an attempt at camouflage, but then realized I could do little about my height without inflicting great pain on myself and so continued on as I was. So I was a bit worried, in addition to that, many people warned us of the dangers of getting ripped off by taxi drivers. We don't yet have the handle on Spanish to haggle effectively (I.e. using insults about the cab drivers mother, etc) to deal with that situation. So off we went.

We found a little 3 wheeler thing that we took to the branch the next morning. It cost us about $1. Vanessa went crazy taking pictures of the thing, we've got like 20, but for sake of not killing those looking at this with dial up, I'll post just one.

We arrived at the branch without incident and we didn't get ripped off. We walked through the gate at the branch and arrived here. The branch here is breathtakingly beautiful in comparison with the rest of the country. Here many people work for around a dollar or two a day, so I'm sure that for many of the Bethelites from Nica, bethel is better than most possibilities for a career. Even with a modest stipend, I didn't ask how much it is here, I can imagine it would be amazing to be here. Oddly enough, they don't have a line of local brothers beating down the door to get in, I can't quite figure that one out. We unexpectedly met up with the Spanish friends from a week ago again while at the branch. Tomas and Eunice, one of the couples from Spain, after waiting for a year and a half had just found out this week that their house had just sold, even in this abysmal market. Much of the time they were here they were lamenting the fact that they couldn't move here to serve because they had made the decision of buying a house. That problem out of the way, we hope to see them down here! Our interview went well but because of some logistical issues with our letters we were unable to really receive much direction from the branch. Oh well. We'll hope to get that one worked out soon. :o)

Unfortunately there is more to tell and I'm cautious about keeping these things too long. Maybe I'll post again this weekend. Hope everyone is doing well! As a side note, (and as an attempt to appease our offended congregation mates :o) ) Andrew and Jenny are going away to Esteli (poke around on the map you'll find it to the NNW of Managua) for pioneer school. We will miss them terribly. Though we'll be miserable without them, we hope they enjoy it!


permalink written by  Shane Perry on October 2, 2008 from Managua, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged Managua, Branch, AndrewAndJenny and Ryan
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Evelyn and Roses

Jinotega, Nicaragua

Evelyn:

We have a great new study. The best kind, the kind that comes to you. Parents send their kids to sell things from door to door. Kind of a shame because they should be in school. One girl, Evelyn, sells us tortillas (Sad confession: we don't actually eat the tortillas. The sisters here said its not safe to eat food when you don't know what the kitchen is like.) Whether we bought her tortillas or not, she liked to hang around at the door watching whatever we were doing. When her brothers and sisters would come to get her, they'd point at us giggling and laughing and then all run away. One day while she was hanging out, we grabbed the bible and asked if she knew God's name. Of course, she did. “It's Jesus.” Then we asked if she could read, kind of doubting it since she looked like she was 6. Yup, she could read and she's 10. So, syllable by syllable she read Luke 1:31, 32. that Jesus is the name of the Son of the Most High. And then Ps 83:18 for the name of the Most High. When we asked her God's name again, she got it! Ryan suggested we get the Great Teacher book. So, now whenever she comes we read from that together. (She comes everyday.) Yesterday, she brought 4 other kids. But she wanted to be the first to blurt out “Jehova,” Even before we asked them what God's name is. We were pleased to see she had already taught them all too. In the picture Evelyn is the 2nd from the left.

Roses:

October 3rd was our 5th anniversary. Shane thought to buy me roses. And the story is funny. When he gave them to me he said there were supposed to be five, one for each year. Which is so incredibly sweet. But there were only four. He bought them from a woman selling on the bus. The “Bus General” ( The Bus General, as we call him, is not the driver. The driver only, well, drives. This man is in charge. He collects all the fares, keeps order and scales the outside of the bus while its moving to get down peoples chickens and bicycles before their stop.) had already told her it was time to get off. So Shane quickly asked how much they were. Five cordobas each. Shane opened his wallet and the General and the lady 'whoa'd. He only had 100's. The General quickly made change and the lady asked how many. Hurried, Shane tried to say five. But the General shouted “four,” paid the lady and kicked her off the bus. Leaving Shane bewildered with 4 red roses in one hand and a pile of change in the other. That definitely makes these the most special roses he's ever got me.

Andrew and Jenny:

Due to recent demand by our readers, it has come to our attention that there is a great lack of information on this blog about the Lathams. We are happy to oblige. Andrew and Jenny are an amazing couple. We see them on the sidewalk holding hands headed to service morning and evening. In the meetings he's giving like 5 parts while she's translating it all into sign language. In their off time, they're teaching us Spanish, making lasagnas with homemade pasta, and volunteering in deaf schools. Thanks to Jenny's preparedness we've been able to borrow just about every kitchen item imaginable. And Andrew is great too 'cause you just cant make this guy a bad meal. All this, and they still have time to watch Horatio Hornblower episodes with their friends!



permalink written by  Shane Perry on October 8, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
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