May 2008, Jim, a good friend and I joined Jeff from New York, in Managua, Nicaragua.
Jim and I flew into the country, first time either of us has really left the States. Neither one of us speaks Spanish, yet we traveled there without knowing anyone to meet a brother from New York who we never met, except for emails and some phone conversations. We had Christ as our common bond that brought us together. Jim and I arrived in the evening around 9pm and got to the motel with a lot of hand signals and pointing at the paper work of information. The motel was nice, but we knew we were not in the States. Next day we walked down the road a bit to take in the sights and it wasn't far to reach extreme poverty. We were able to obtain a rental car that Jeff had reserved, while waiting for Jeff to arrive. Waiting at the motel for his flight to arrive and we receive a phone call from the front desk, since we do not speak Spanish and their English wasn't terrific, conversation was challenging. Threw the conversation, we understood that Herberto was here to see us. Jim nor I have never met Herberto, I only knew about him from some other people. So we went to meet and great and fortunately Herberto brought an interpreter. He asked if we had a rental car, which we had obtained and we followed Herberto to his home. Sounds innocent enough, but we were in a foriegn country with no idea where we were going with folks we didn't know. But God is in control and this was our common bond. We eventually found out that Jeff did not make his flight and would not be joining us till 9pm. So the 4 of us jumped in the rental car and went to a remote village to visit a growing community of believers, while there we worshipped the Lord with them. We had the privilege to hand out OCC (Operational Christmas Child) packages from Samaritan Purse ministry. My wife and girls have always filled shoe boxes for this ministry at church, but I never paid much attention, it was a good thing to do. Now that I have experienced first hand the JOY it brought to these children to open gifts (especially in May) and here there laughter and faces showing joy was priceless. After this village we traveled to another home in a different location to a pastors home on a pineapple plantation, the pineapple was absolutely wonderful. We picked up Jeff that evening and proceded driving East and made it to a small town and spent the night in a family owned/run/home, this made the first motel look very nice.
The next day we headed off traveling across Nicaragua to Pueto Cabezas on the East coast, the majority of the road there was a rock base, pot holed, heavily traveled road that made us moan and groan towards the end of the day from any bump (that was constant). We arrived in the late afternoon and could not find a motel. Herberto made a phone call to a local pastor who knew someone who was able to get us a motel room for the evening. We met up with Felix, a pastor of a Mesquite Indian village about 25 miles out in the country. We visited his village that evening and seen first hand the devastation from Hurrican Felix September 2007. The tops of the trees from about 15ft high were gone. Roofs of their homes were gone, no work, river was clogged due to log jams, with no way down river.
Next day we scouted the area, seeing about 80% unemployment with no way to repair their homes. Small airport in Pueto Cabezas, fishing pier was gone due to the hurricane and fishing had stopped. They used to have export/inport business from this port, but no resources to build it back up.
We traveled back across the country, stopping at a river crossing by cable pulled barge (Indian Jones Adventure in person). The barge was stopped for lunch, so we took our chance at a small roadside restaurant for lunch. Ask no questions, no lies will be told, food was cooked and wasn't bad. After lunch we traveled acroos the river by barge and took off across the jungle, mid day puntured a back tire and had to change it, climbed back in and took off. Only then did it hit you that we were in the middle of Nicaragua jungle with spare tire and no "AAA" to call, just prayer. We arrived in La Rosita late afternoon and started making some phone calls because Jeff's brother inlaw was supposed to be around that week for a medical visit. We stopped for dinner at one roadside cafe and it didn't feel right, so we left and went to another cleaner cafe. As we were eating a older lady walked out of the house past us and Herbeto reconigzed her from 20 years ago, it was quit a home coming. We hung around waiting for our blown tire to be repaired? Time has no meaning here, we had to encourage them to fix our tire that day. It held air but had a huge glob of rubber sticking out of the tire, fixed! Getting late and we still haven't caught up to Jeff's brother inlaw, we do not even know if he is there that week. About the time we were heading out of town, the cell phone rang and it was him returning Jeff's message, unbelievable. Returned back to the village and visited for another hour or two, we had a lot of ground to cover to make it across the jungle and it was dark when we left. Somewhere in the middle of pitch dark and the jungle, we stopped to stretch and the noise in the jungle was loud and beautiful. The sky lit up with the stars of the sky, and there was a multitude of stars! The call to get moving was spoke and that is when they told us it wasn't safe to be out there due to robbers. We arrived in a village at about 11:30 pm and went to a motel they knew about off the beaten path. This ended up being the worst and most evil place we were at, too tired to care and slept. Tried to take a shower that morning, had enough water to soap up and then the water stopped, standing there with soap all over waiting for the water to return (hopefully) it did and I rinsed quickly.
Traveled north across mountainous terrain through multitude of coffee plantations, lush and green. Stopped late that afternoon on the Honduras border close to the town of Somoto, we were there to be part of a commissioning of a new church that was recently built by Jeff's church. We were invited to attend a babtismal service in a creek up in the hills. Later that evening we were guests at the service and was given the privilage to give my testimony to about 300+ people, that was an experience and a blessing, no thrills, just worshipping God and having His word preached. We headed back into town for the night and got some sleep.
Next day we went to pay for the rooms, handed over my credit card and they only had one place in the whole town that could process a credit card. So we drove over to the gas station and processed my card. We took off heading south and stopped by a small roadside diner (lots of vehicles, good spot?) had a great meal and visited the kitchen, open fire stove where they cooked the tortillas. Once we had gotten back to Managua, we just praised the Lord, for the safe travel (no spare tire) and lots of ground covered, what a wonderful trip! We have built a great friendship with Herberto, Adgusto and Jeff. We look forward into going back to Nicaragua to build a church.
We have land that was purchased and currently raising funds for the material as well as funds to purchase medicine. We have 25 people from our community, from 5 different churches that have teamed up and are going with a small medical team, kids club team and a construction crew. We are excited to see the Lord work in the peoples life's in Nicaragua as well as ours.
Keep us in your prayers.
