Nicaragua Trip - Day 3 - June 16th

What a day! I started at 7:00 am with a trip to the school with Raul. We checked out the computer lab where there are 10 old computers - probably from the mid 90's - sitting on tables with benches pulled up like picnic tables. The computers all had Microsoft Office 2003 even though they were a little slow. We said hi to a few kids and got a few hugs before their classes started and we headed back to the team center for some breakfast. After breakfast, we had some time to prepare with our awesome Excel team for our first Excel class that afternoon. We desperately tried to change the language on the two laptops we brought down, but we were unsuccessful after an hour of trying. However, the team made a great plan to have the kids create a spreadsheet and do some data entry. After we finished meeting, our small group was assigned to go to Nueva Vida and help at the feeding centers in the refugee camp. We arrived there after about an hour ride on the bumpy bus. The drive into Nueva Vida was quite interesting and filled with mixed feelings. The houses were mainly cement walls that they shared with the people around them, covered with corrugated metal for a roof. The properties were extremely small, but that didn't seem to affect the people that lived there. Every person that we saw smiled and waved at us as we drove by. I was worried that the people would be resentful of us because of our luxury Americaness, but that was never an issue. We arrived at a building with a large breezeway and many rooms off of the breezeway. We set up a bunch of chairs in the breezeway and listened to Tommy talk about life in Nueva Vida. It is a large community of refugees from the 1998 hurricane. Many parents send their children to the feeding center for lunch each day. They also have a school in the community where many children receive their education. After the talk, we toured the facilities they created to help earn money for the community. They had a sewing shop, silver smith for jewelry, bakery, and a carpentery shop. They encourage the older students that have ideas for new projects that will bring income to the community to pursue their dreams. If it's successful, they continue the work in the community, accepting that God had His hand on the project. As an example, the pastor of the church that started the feeding center thought that God had told him to build a bakery. He tried to reason with God because he had never made bread in his life. However, God won in the end and he started a bakery. He made something like 60 loaves of bread the first day and now he's making something like 60,000 loaves of bread - or something like that. It was so amazing to see how the pastor planted the seed and God took care of the rest. So after the tour, they started to let the kids in for lunch. We were put to work collecting the dishes and cups for food. We brought them to the kitchen to be filled with food and drink and then carried them back to the children. Each child knew their own bowl and cup and always helped hand out the other dishes to the other children. A few kids started to joke around and had a little too much fun playing with their food! After lunch, we were able to play with the kids on the playground. One girl came right up to me, Marita, and stayed with me, giving me constant hugs, until we had to leave. She was so beautiful and it was so special to be with her. The other buddy that I made was Josue. He was an extremely intelligent boy. While I was trying to converse with some of the kids in Spanish, he came over and told the kids to speak slower so that I could better understand. He hid his english skills, but I pried them out of him and then he kept speaking to me in english. I became very attached to him and I know that he will become great some day! It came time to say goodbye and it was so difficult. Many of us were crying as the bus drove away and the children chased after us for about a half mile. So the bus brought us out for lunch at Raul and Josias' uncle's restaurant where their mom and aunt served us tortilla chips and delicious chili. Then we returned to Casa Bernabe where we started our first work project day teaching Excel to the kids. For the first hour, we started out playing a name game where we said our names with actions and went around the circle. Some of the kids were not willing to participate, but they eventually succumbed to our prodding. :) It was a good class and great fun teaching the kids! The next group arrived after and hour and a half and we did the same activities. We even shouted "Excel" everytime we completed a task. After our work project ended, we went back to the team center and had dinner with the group. After our delicious dinner, we had porch time where we had open time to say something we remembered about the day and how we saw Christ that day. We ended that night with discussion in our small group. We had a spirit-filled prayer time over Alyssa and Karsen who were both deeply moved by our activities that day. It was an amazing day!!