Settling In
Hi everybody, sorry we have been so silent here, it has been difficult to contact the outside world. I will post our new mailing address and phone numbers on our Contact Page. Our email will always be the same though so feel free to send us a line anytime. We are moved into a rental house and we have purchased a vehicle that will be used for our family and the camp. Our house is very close to Lake Nicaragua so we enjoy going down to the beach and wading in the water.
It is hot in Nicaragua, Ashlyn got a heat rash when we first arrived and Sawyers tongue has stretched twice as long from always hanging out of his mouth in 90+ degree weather.
We’ve been in Nicaragua for five weeks, but even in that short period of time I can tell you a few things I am already sure about Nicaragua. For one, everything takes about three times if not four times as long to accomplish here than back home. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you could be shopping for groceries or discussing something with a local, it’s going to take three times as long - hands down. It all requires patience and flexibility to adjust to a different pace of life, but we are starting to get the hang of it. The biggest thing I’ve learned about Nica is that it’s not what you know in Nicaragua, it’s who you know. This is the case with almost everything. Also you can’t do anything over the phone in Nica you have to do everything in person (also a reason things take so long). As an ExPat friend of mine here would say: “There are no yellow pages in Nicaragua, just people”. Also if someone is going to meet you somewhere at 8:00, they mean 8:15 to 8:30 if your lucky, so you have to add fifteen to twenty minutes on to the time as well. We are learning these lessons one at a time as we try to settle in to our new home.
The Camp has been very busy, we had a church come for a men’s retreat just after we arrived, a team from Virginia came and ran a camp two weeks ago and another team from Tennessee came this week and ran another children’s camp for the children who live in the Managua dump. In a few days another group of children will come from Masaya with a missionary to have a fun retreat and then another church from Rivas will come out again and host a women’s retreat. We have more churches in Nicaragua interested as well, it’s all good news for the camp because right now we are skimming by on finances and the more teams that come, the more we can offer as a camp. Everyone who comes to the camp loves it and always wants to come back. Please keep us in your prayers as well as Campo Alegría.