Day 2 in Nicaragua

So every time I have gone with the Young's and McMillan's to Nicaragua we have stayed at The A Hotel in Leon and we drive out to La Calle Real and back.  With the Community Center in La Calle Real now people have stayed there so they don't have to travel the hour back and forth.  I thought I'd just post a few pictures of the drive.  There are three different active? volcanoes that you can see on the drive out there.  I'm not sure how active they are, but they are always smoking a little bit.  The first time I was shocked how many volcanoes make up Nicaragua with probably half of them active.  It's an amazing sight to me.  I'm also amazed how they cut roads out of the volcanic rock, make clay pots with the volcanic clay and soil and live in this vast waste land.  I'm sure it's not a total waste land, some areas they grow banana trees, spices and other types of fruit trees.  I'm sure they could grow more if they had better access to water.  All of the poor horses, cows and dogs look like they couldn't get any skinnier.

Anyway, Wednesday was a wonderful day and yes, I even enjoyed the hot sunshine, warm breeze blue skies and traces of humidity.  It's summer there right now, so it is considered the dry season.  Sometimes the dirt gets blown up in your face and that is a bit annoying and painful for the eyes, but overall felt like a dream after moving back to freezing cold Utah with the ugly gray inversion.  Nicaragua was a little bit of heaven.

Today we went out to the high school to find out what students need school uniforms so that they can attend school.  There's on picture with a fenced in square full of chairs and tables, they just rust faster than they can replace them, that hasn't changed in 10 years.  It was funny to see that they made a fenced in area for them instead of just throwing them in a large pile behind the office buildings.  We then went to the center and taught some English classes, Denise went with the book reading group and I helped Jayna with the disabled class.  I just love these kids and adults.  They aren't able to attend school due to a disability so they hired one of the high school teachers to come after school on Wednesdays and do a class for those that can't attend school.  What fun to do some art projects, blow bubbles and read with them.  We took a lot of pictures so that we could print them to give to them next time a group visits.  It was a great day.

Day 1 in Nicaragua

Did you ever wonder if I would make it back down to Nicaragua?  Me too!  I went with Morgan in 2011 and again in 2012.  My first trip we worked in an orphanage and my second trip I helped take sewing machines down and helped Denise show some girls there how to sew.  Both trips were wonderful.  I really enjoyed going down.  I thought I'd go every other year, but somehow life happened and it didn't work out.  The first of December I saw that four people were going down in January so I asked Angie if I could go with them.  This was that trip.

I did have a few luggage hicups on this trip.  I'm spoiled flying on Delta with a little bit of status, I have no status on United and I booked using Troy's miles while he still had status.  Extra charges for an oversized duffel bag, detained because I tried to play dumb and not do the extra search and just left with my group, which just made them think I was hiding something.  Once it got sorted out though, the officals were pretty ticked that there wasn't anything they could charge me extra for so they finally let me go.  Lesson learned, follow the crowd.

We arrived in Leon Monday evening and had some yummy tacos in the square.  Then we were up and gone the next day to the center in La Calle Real.  We organized all of the library books, Angie taught some English classes, there were some community counsel meetings, we visited some of the disabled kids who can't make it to the center for the wednesday class, we took some motor carts (I forgot what they called them, but much better than walking through the ashy sand and dirt), dropped Rosario off at Maria's home to stay for a couple months and organized all of the donations and materials for the store.  It was a great day, nice and sunny with a breeze blowing.  Glorious :) Hahahaha

Baby Shark do do do.... Letter from Sister Keller

Things I never thought I'd do in heels:
Hike
Run
Pipi hunt
Push a car out of the sand
Climb a fence
Carry smol children on my back
Chase a pig
Help gut a shark (thx dad for teaching me how to gut fish when I was younger)


So this week was super boring from Monday to Friday, then all the craziness that didnt happen was compacted into Saturday and Sunday.

Since its holiday, Monday through Friday Opotiki was dead. We had one lesson per day, and the rest was spent contacting or door knocking. It was a pretty tiring first half of the week.

On Saturday we drove up to Te Kaha, which is a beautiful hour drive down the coast along thecountry side. Well we went to visit a less active, and right when we got there brother Kawha (the LA)  brought in a SHARK that he had just caught. They gutted it right in front of us and two interesting things happened. The shark had apparently just eaten an octopus because octopus tentacles started coming  out of its mouth and it spewed up half an octopus! Also apparently she was pregnant because when we cut her open, 16 baby sharks in an egg sac came out. It was way cool to watch them cut open the shark, I was very fascinated. Then as we were leaving, their pig ran away so we had to chase it down Haha. Fun times!

Sunday was super super spiritual! At church, almost every seat was filled in our little chapel. We had nearly 60 people there!!! It was crazy we usually have 30 at most. A lot of those people were Less Actives and people we are working with so that was neat as well. Then afterwards we had an awesome lesson with Savannah and Sapphire, and they invited all their cousins and friends so we ended up teaching 7 girls the Gospel of jesus Christ! They all kind of smirked when we talked about baptism, but we also talked about the 10 commandments and they loved that. I have a lot of gratitude for this day, Heavenly Father showed me that sometimes all the spiritual blessings dont come until the last day, but it's always worth it to wait it out.

For my spiritual thought, I'd like to share Alma 2: 29-31. Our Branch President showed these verses to us, because they're about a battle between Alma and Amlici, and our Branch Presidnt was a NZ boxing champion. In these verses, Alma and Amlici are fighting and neither side seem to be prevailing. In the middle of the fight, Alma took a step back and said a prayer to the Lord for help, and as soon as he started fighting again he was strengthened and beat Amlici. I love these verses because sometimes when things are the hardest, we need to disengage and say a prayer. Not every night when we go to sleep, but when we are in the middle of the battle. I'm sure Alma said a prayer before he walked into the fight, but he once again had to step aside and pray for strength.

I hope yous all know that God is on your side!! Yous are awesome, have a fantastic week!

Much love,
SK