Our Nicaragua Mission Team returned safely from our nine days serving in the second poorest country in our hemisphere−Nicaragua. For the last four years, we have developed a deep partnership with a school in León. We visited the computer lab that we donated last year and once again tackled painting the school hallway and assembly area. We rebuilt an unsafe spiral staircase and replaced all the broken steps. The school hosted us during an assembly and we recited part of a poem by the Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío, about Saint Francis ministering to a wolf. The principal cried as she was thanking us for our support.
Later, in our partner village in San Fransico Libre, we were greeted by treasured friends who we have grown to love over the last three years. Families took us by the hand to show us the water collecting ponds we dug for them last year. Then they proudly showed us the verdant gardens that the cisterns fed, enabling families to grow fruit and vegetables. Tours through the gardens included introductions of every tree by children saying, “This is a mandarin; this is our papaya; this is our guava; etc.” Such a gift to understand that water allows a garden to flourish and feed families.
This year we helped build two retaining walls to prevent erosion as well as digging two new cisterns. We brought 12 chairs, new tools, and a huge bag of sports equipment for the community. As part of the presentation, the leaders of the village opened the community shed to reveal that everyone of the tools we had given last year were still there and in use by the whole community.
And as trust has grown, we learned more about the grave difficulty of living in such an impoverished region. One woman was suffering from a life threatening medical condition and couldn’t get the “traveling papers” from her local clinic to go to the hospital in Managua. Another leader shared how their three graduating high school seniors had graduated with highest academic honors, and the whole community couldn’t find the financial resources to send them to the university. The three students had dreams of becoming a doctor, an engineer, and a psychologist.
The generosity of the village was overwhelming. Baskets of Guava’s were given to us daily. Bottles of honey were presented to each member, representing a year’s harvest from a hive. Delicious food was cooked for us over an open fire and buckets of water were refilled each morning so we could all take bucket showers.
And we laughed. Oh how we laughed. Laughter needs no translation and laughter rang out as we cheered on baseball players fielding hits while avoiding pigs on the field and a hen who wandered across third baseline with her chicks.
Stefan and Jada Li wowed the Nicaraguans with their soccer prowess and Chase, Ben and Taylor invented a new game combining dodgeball, hot potato and keep away, that is impossible to describe, except that it didn’t seem to have any rules!
It is an amazing gift to be given generous hospitality by a community that has no running water, cooks over and open fire, and still herds cattle by horseback. We all returned transformed by their hospitality and the love we shared as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Thank you for the privilege of representing you in Nicaragua.
In Christ, Rev. Jeanie Shaw
