We're back...

After spending two weeks in the States and this week getting settled in back here in Managua, it’s time to once again share thoughts, feelings and experiences with you. The up side in not blogging for a few days shy of a month is that there’s so much to share. The down side is there’s so much to share. So, once again, I will caution you to settle in because as a dear friend of mine, Wanda Sanders, once said about me, “She’s kind of long-winded,”…oh, how right you were, Wanda!

So to get you caught up…the weekend before we left for the States, Jim, Susanna, Pastor Sergio and I made a quick visit up to Rio Blanco. We wanted to do some follow-up with the families on whose homes we had worked on the month prior. Jim and I also wanted to do a large food basket for each of those families plus another family with whom we had some contact during that week. We bought 3 large plastic containers and filled them with staples, such as rice, beans, flour, corn flour, salt, sugar, coffee, and so forth.

The Saturday we chose to go to Rio Blanco was also a national holiday here. It goes by many names but is most commonly called Revolution Day or Sandanista Day and was originally intended to celebrate what is now 19 years of freedom under the cruel dictatorship of Somoza. But as is common with most such celebrations which we see worldwide, what began as remembrance of a day of liberation has turned in to an excuse to hold a political rally of great magnitude; this particular one colored by the current party’s spin on the evil intentions of our own country. An American in this country is wise to keep a low profile in the capital that day or as we chose to do, go somewhere else during the celebration. I do want to add for those of you who might worry, our government is not liked here due to our backing the Somoza regime in the 80s, but as most other Americans who live here will testify, we do not experience problems one on one with the people. And I will repeat what we said during our stay back in the States, we don’t want to be seen as Americans, our desire is to be seen as followers of Jesus Christ.

When we left that morning about 6:45, I was a week in to a yukky chest cold so the thought of riding 4 ½ hours up to Rio Blanco wasn’t appealing but we knew it was our time to go. By the time we picked Susanna up and got on the other side of Managua to get Pastor Sergio, it was over an hour later as we left the city...long before the drinking and the rally would begin. It rained on us off and on all the way up and we encountered a lot of delays with road construction plus one time when we had to stop for a convoy of about 30 busloads of people heading in to the celebration in Managua. The government makes sure that its supporters will be there in full force. But even with the delays, we still made pretty good time all in all and arrived about 5 ½ hours later.

We went straight to the first home we wanted to visit. It was a house directly across the road from the first house we had worked on with the team from South Carolina. A single mother lives there with several young daughters. The first day we were roofing across the road, we got caught in a terrible rain storm and this woman and her children took Jim and me in to their house. Although the size of their wooden plank home was a bit larger than most, it still had a dirt floor and contained very little furniture. The mother gave Jim and me two of the three plastic chairs we saw there. They had a small wooden table holding a small tv…the picture wavy and the sound static. There were no lamps and the only light coming in was from the open doorway. I imagine she was probably illegally hooked up to the power lines as she didn’t appear to have the means to be paying an electric bill.

The mother left to go in to the room directly behind the living area and we could hear noises coming from there. We must have looked puzzled at the sound because one of the little girls took me by the hand and led me to the doorway. The mother was chopping up small pieces of wood in order to make a fire…she was going to fix us some coffee. I stole a look at the kitchen. It held very little. We thanked her but told her we couldn’t stay as our group was getting ready to leave. I was so touched by her hospitality. The women across the road were getting a new roof from the gringos and she was getting nothing, yet she opened her home to two strangers and was getting ready to share her meager bit of provisions with us. I asked if I could take a picture of the girls along with their friend…she smiled and said yes but hid behind the door when I wanted to take hers. We left.

This is the first family we went to visit with a food basket. I don’t know if she’s a Christian or not, she wasn’t there when we came back for the follow up visit, but I do know she showed the kind of hospitality that we as Christians should show. She wasn’t concerned with how her house looked but rather she was concerned we were getting wet. She wasn’t ashamed she had only plastic chairs to offer us, rather she offered us what she had. She wasn’t embarrassed she had to cut wood to make coffee, rather she was willing to use her wood and her bit of coffee for her guests. I thought of all the times I chose not to have guests because of a dusty mantle or a well-worn couch or only left-overs to offer. And I realized God was using this woman’s generosity to make me face up to yet another area of my own mis-placed pride. The basket of food was my own way of saying thank you to a woman who would never have understood how much I appreciated not only her gestures and her spirit, but also her teaching me a very important lesson.

The children remembered us and were excited to see us again. We had wrapped the baskets in black plastic to keep them from getting wet so the kids didn’t know what was in them…but they knew it was a gift and that was enough to make them giggly. We had Pastor Sergio take the basket in as we want the people to make the connection of ministry through the church, not through us. Our role there is to support Verbo church and its pastor and if the connection is made to us, it can easily be misconstrued as just another handout. Pastor Sergio asked the girls a few questions and told them to tell their mother where the church was downtown and that he would love for them to begin coming. The little girls remembered the church as they had attended the VBS the South Carolina team had put on during their time there. We gave hugs and got ready for our next visit across the road.

As I read this part out loud to Jim, he said something that was really good. He doesn’t talk nearly as much as I do, doesn’t get a chance, but boy, when he does, he has something worthwhile to say. We were talking about the woman’s hospitality and he told me he had just read about that subject this morning in his quiet time. He reminded me of what Jesus said in Matthew 25:34-46…you can look that up and read it for yourselves. But then, Jim said, “It looks different when you see it like this than what we picture from the pulpit, doesn’t it?”

The family across the road was surprised to see us and seemed a bit apprehensive that we were there. Once again we had Pastor Sergio take in the black plastic bundle. The culture here is that when given a gift, the recipient doesn’t open it in front of the one who did the giving. This home doesn’t have a man in the house either and so the women graciously accepted the bundle from Pastor Sergio and set it down. The conversation was a bit awkward at first as the only woman living there who attends Verbo church was gone and the others were not sure what Pastor Sergio wanted. When they discovered we simply came by to see how they liked their new kitchen and just to check on them, they warmed up to us.

One of the ladies took us in to the new kitchen addition and proudly showed us how much bigger it was. Jim took several photos as she was making tortillas. The roof was new but the smoke from the cook fire was as much of a problem as it was in the old kitchen. Breathing in the heavy smoke didn’t help my cough from having a cold and so we cut our visit a bit short there. Plus we were running out of time as Pastor Sergio had his weekly radio program to do in just a couple of hours.

We headed out to our last house. This was the home of the man who had only one leg. His place was the one upon the hill that was a bear to get to with all the mud. Guess what? All the rains continued to make for yet another muddy trek through the pasture, across the creek and up the hill. As with the other two homes, Pastor Sergio carried the food basket…I think Jim was really thankful that was the plan with this third home especially. The baskets were heavy and the mud made walking and remaining upright enough of an adventure for us…neither of us relished the thought of trying to make it up the hill carrying that slick, black plastic bundle!
The man had seen our car coming down the road from ½ mile away and knew it was us. He sent his grandchildren running down through the pastures to open the small barbed wire gate which opened to the path. We waded through ankle deep water in the low places and climbed up the small hill to the next gate. Although we were better prepared for our trip up to his home this time (we wore boots), we still had to slosh and sludge our way through mud and manure and slip-slide across the large rocks we used as stepping stones to get across the creek.

When we finally made it up to the house, the man was sitting in a hammock he had strung under the new roof. There were clothes hanging on a line (which would be a real plus for such a rainy climate) as well as a small hanging plastic pot of flowers to decorate the new “living” space. He was so glad we had come to visit and told us he knew it was us when he first saw the car coming. He was telling us how they were gradually moving the large pile of dirt, using it in their garden, and that he had plans to get sides put on the new structure. He said that it was so nice to have such a place to sleep (this is outside) with the hot and rainy weather. He then became very teary, thanking us again for his new house. He said he would never have had that without the team. He said that there were people all around , but no one helps one another and that we came from so far away to help him. He said he knew God had sent us and he wiped away tears as he spoke. We had a few of our own to wipe away. Although he didn’t open his food basket, he knew what it was and again, became very emotional, thanking us repeatedly. He and Pastor Sergio talked and he said he thought he would like to go to his church. Pastor Sergio told him he would be glad to have him come. We are praying that happens.

In the course of our visit, he shared with us that he had been having a great deal of pain at the site of the amputation of his leg. It seemed as though he had a hernia there and it was causing some problems. We have some money set aside left by several of the South Carolina team along with some other funds of our own and we are trying to get this gentleman some medical care. There was a medical team due to arrive in Rio Blanco the first week we were going to be gone to the States. One of the doctors scheduled to come was an orthopedic surgeon and he was supposed to go see this man. We are anxious to find out what the diagnosis is and what kind of follow up medical care he needs and we hope to be able to help out with that.

We stayed the night and came home the following morning. We had planned on staying for church services with Pastor Sergio but I had a reaction the night before to some medication I was taking for my cold. It necessitated Susanna getting the doctor we know in Rio Blanco to come to our hotel room and checking me out. We all decided it would be best if we headed back to Managua first thing Sunday morning.

I have had many people question my medical care here. I have to tell you I can’t complain. With whatever it was I had a couple of months ago, the doctor I saw in Managua managed to come up with the right combo of antibiotics to get me back on my feet after 3 weeks of being down. And Chela, the doctor who saw me in Rio Blanco, couldn’t have had a better bedside manner. She not only left her home to come to the hotel to see me, she was gentle and kind and she joined Pastor Sergio in laying hands on me and praying over me as I lay on the bed. And to top it off, in spite of our insistence, she refused any kind of payment saying it was what she could do for me as her sister in Christ. I think I have told you I am a good giver. God has had to bring me to Nicaragua to teach me how to be a good receiver. It’s a humbling place to be in.