Day 9 - Friday - Visiting Ministries and Shopping

As I look back on this past week, one thing that stands out to me is how happy the children are when we play with them.  I remember playing balloons with the kids and playing pato, pato, ganso, (duck, duck, goose) with the kids.  They always enjoyed running around the circle and chasing us.

One of the things I remember about working on the house construction is always having dust.  Dust was everywhere; in my eyes, in my hair, in my socks and shoes and always in my nose.  When I worked on construction, I filled the cinder blocks with dirt, and filled the spaces between the blocks with cement or “mezcala”.  When my hands would get messy with cement I would sometimes leave my messy cement handprint on Macy’s shirt.  But then Macy would put her cement on my shirt.  It was having fun while working hard on the houses.

It seems like Nica children always like to play with us “gringos”.  They would sometimes call out to us with big smiles and want to play with us.  Often the young children would come up to me and want to be held.  There was one girl at Taellor’s house who didn’t want to be held by anyone, but once I held her she wanted me to hold her the rest of the morning.  Even though we are different than the Nica children we do have fun together and they have big smiles as they play.

Mckinlee (11)

This is our last day in Nicaragua, and with it comes a day that does not have any building construction or VBS at the churches.

A very encouraging start to our day occurred when one of the translators, Meykel, came and talked with Craig and Tim and wanted to become a Christian.  They talked and prayed with him and the angels in heaven are rejoicing!  Many on our team have been sharing with Meykel during this week, and he had many questions about God’s Word as he was reading John 10 and other passages to prepare for interpreting a message.  There were tears of joy from Meykel and on our team.

The team with three of our translators:

Meykel in the orange, Tanya in the purple, Umberto in the red.

This morning we went to visit the dump feeding ministry.  This is a ministry to some of the poorest children in Nicaragua.  The families often make their “living” by going through the garbage from the dump trucks to see what they can eat or sell.  It is emotionally hard for me to see the boys, about 9-12 years old, playing games with us at the feeding center and then suddenly running out and jumping

onto a passing garbage truck to see what they can find. 

 

The center feeds over 100 children each day. They each bring their own bowl and get a generous ladleful of rice and beans. Some eat right there, but most left with their food, probably to take home to share with family.

Their bowls lined up on the wall waiting to be filled.

Waiting in line for their meal

Dore, Grace and Tricia helped serve while

Kristi poured water for them to wash their hands.

This elderly lady brought a bowl and got food.

This ministry also has an abstinence program for young girls, and teaches these girls how to plan and work so that they will not always live off of the dump or sell themselves to eat.  They are teaching the girls how to make quality jewelry to sell so that they can start to understand how to do a small business.  This takes a lot of teaching because the truly poor people don’t ever think of saving money; they just spend what they have to buy food for the next day.

It causes us to rejoice when we see the joy and laughter on the faces of the young children as they play games with us at the feeding center.

How we are reminded that our God has a special place in His heart for the poor and how Tammy from Project H.O.P.E., and other people, work to provide for the welfare of these children.

We followed this ministry visit by having a Nicaragua lunch in Managua and then went to the Managua Market where we were able to see many local crafts and many items that are uniquely Nicaraguan.

 

In the afternoon, we visited the Furia Santa Ministry for troubled men.  Furia Santa means Holy Fury.  Most of the men that come to Furia Santa have had problems with drugs and/or alcohol and the leaders love them with what they call “tough love” and share that the power of Christ is what can release them from their sins and addictions.  Two gentlemen shared their testimony of how they have been “clean” for several months since they came to Furia Santa and that they are now starting to rebuild their relationships with their families. 

These men also work at Furia Santa: tending the Dragonfruit plants (470 plants have to be watered twice a day.), raising tilapia and making cinder blocks (This is where Project H.O.P.E. buys all the blocks for the houses we help build). They are also learning some crafts to make money to save for when they are ready to start out on their new life away from Furia Santa.

Dragonfruit plants

Tilapia pond

The cinderblock machine and hammock making

Leather craft, knotted bracelets, paintings

Working on knotted bracelets

 

We left Furia Santa to go just down the road in the village of Mateare where Eduardo was building a storage room and office for the newly finished preschool.  Eduardo is on staff at Project H.O.P.E. and works each week with the children’s ministry.  He often joins our team and does a great job of sharing Jesus with the children and using music and puppets and many other things to talk with the children about Jesus.  Eduardo is also a very, very good soccer player and I think Konnor said he learned some things about soccer from Eduardo.

Eduardo’s heart for children led him to begin a preschool in Mateare, which is where Project H.O.P.E. has built hundreds of homes for very poor people.  These people would not be able to send their children to preschool, but this school allows children to learn about the love of Christ, have food each day and be prepared for school.  His dream is that God will work in these children to bring them to salvation and then to work in the families so that many of their parents would also come to salvation.  The preschool has 91 children this year and Eduardo said that the school has no budget, as of yet, but the teachers all volunteer their time and God provides the school materials through many different ways. 

 Eduardo

As we head home tomorrow, we will look forward to seeing people at home, but we will also miss many people that have become our friends here in Nicaragua.

Gerry