Milta

I wrote two posts today, so if you're keeping up, make sure to read the one right before this also! :)

The word "emotional" doesn't even begin to describe the past few days. Sunday was my fifth and final Cerro Negro climb of the summer. I prayed with friends at the top, enjoyed quiet reflection and then a time of worship with the St. Louis group that's here this week, and watched the sunset at the bottom of the volcano. The few moments in which we stood watching the sunset were the greatest of the day by far. I don't know that I've ever seen a more beautiful sunset, and it felt like God had made it just for our little group. I felt the Lord saying to me, "How much greater and more beautiful than this sunset are the plans that I have for you?"

On Monday, we experienced a totally opposite set of emotions. We found out that we had lost a loved one - a little El Chonco girl named Milta.

On the way to Chonco yesterday, Benito, our bus driver, told Kelly (who told me) that an 11-year-old girl from Chonco had been hit by a car and killed over the weekend. We immediately started thinking of who it could have been. Surely it wasn't one of our girls. They don't live near the main road, and they never have any reason to go out near the street.

All I could think about was getting off of the bus, and when I finally did, I ran to find an answer to our question of who. I had seen Bianca and Patricia, two of my beloved Chonco kids, as we were pulling in and ran and hugged them. I was glad to see them alive. "¿Quien se murió ayer?," I asked them ("Who died yesterday?"). They responded,"Milta," and I was in disbelief. There must be another Milta. They can't be talking about the girl I met on my first day in Chonco, the first Chonco kid I met and befriended, the girl I played with regularly and who attended my charlas, my sassy little smarty-pants Milta.

I looked down the street and saw that Kelly had found out, too. I went and hugged her, and we cried. I've never felt such despair. I've never experienced the loss of a loved one outside of my great uncle's passing (and he was close to ninety years old and more than ready for Heaven). How could this possibly have happened? All that this community has is each other - how could God have let this happen?

I stayed off to the side of where the group was, in tears, while Kelly made a few phone calls. Jackie, one of Milta's closest friends, came over and immediately started crying, too. She knew exactly why Kelly and I were crying. I knelt down to comfort her, and she started comforting me, hugging me and wiping away my tears. I hugged her as tightly as I could. This poor little 8-year-old girl was mourning one of her best friends, and it broke my heart.

Jackie continued to touch my heart as she, Kelly, some of the other little Chonco girls, and I went out to invite the people of the community to a memorial service we were having for Milta later that afternoon. Jackie was, at many of the houses, the first to run up and tell people about the service. You could tell that she desired for her community to come together and mourn and remember with her.

The service we had was beautifully sad. We sang a song called "Hold my Hand," and I stood holding the hand of Vanessa, another of my Chonco babies. I felt the Lord saying, "This is Jesus whose hand you're holding," and I thought of how Jesus also lived in Milta. I know that Jesus walked Milta right through the gates of Heaven last Saturday at 2 PM.

I learned a lot yesterday about community and about friendship. A lot of my little Chonco friends were hugging me after the memorial service because they knew I was sad, and I knew that they accepted me as a part of their family. I will miss our little Milta, and I know that the united community of Amigos and Chonco will never ever forget her.

Milta on my first day in El Chonco

Milta working on an activity at our Food Pyramid charla

Tough days and family times

Written yesterday, posted today...

The week before last ended sort of roughly. I had an emotionally Thursday full of bumps and bruises - we had communication and organization issues, nothing went as planned, and I was totally forgotten and left behind at one point. I took a couple of ladies from the mission group with me to visit the paralyzed patient in Corinto with Dr. Christian and then to Dr. Christian's charla in Santa Matilde. We ended up with two trips to Corinto (the patient was out working the first time, which is actually pretty amazing), a trip to Betania to do some tiny cosmetic operations on two of the interns (Brittany's dad was visiting, and he's a plastic surgeon), and a visit to Santa Matilde. Lots of driving, lots of exhaustion, lots of emotional stress from being left behind when the group left for Betania.

But I learned a lot that day about myself, my insecurities, and depending on the Lord for strength and miracles. We had a really touching experience praying for the patient in Corinto, and I made a really close friend and mentor that day in one of the women, Elizabeth. I was in tears when she left on Saturday, but I know I'll keep in touch with her and visit her when I get back to Atlanta.

This past week was the best yet because my dad was here! And he and the rest of the Sugarloaf UMC group impressed and entertained me all week long. On Sunday, we climbed Cerro Negro. I was convinced that my dad would choose to go the easier way, but I totally underestimated him. Jeff, Tom, Maureen, one of the long-termers (Scott), my dad and I ended up going up the medium (or "harder") way. And everyone in our little group conquered that volcano. It was a huge challenge, and it was such a special thing for me to get to share with my dad. I always think of my dad as a strong and talented man, but this was a whole new facet of him that I had never really gotten to see before.

On Monday, I experienced going to the dump at El Limonal with him and the rest of the Sugarloaf UMC group. I got to go with him to Villa Catalina, see Wilfredo's house and family again, and introduce him to the family that hosted me for a night. I then went home to prepare for my charla on iron that I would be doing the next day.

I really enjoyed my charla last week, and I was so excited to bring my dad and Sharon. I talked about the importance of iron in your diet and how to get more iron in your diet, and I also passed out tortillas that I had made with parsley (which is a great source of iron, if you didn't know that already). It turned into a great time to chat with my favorite ladies of El Chonco and introduce them all to my father. I love those ladies, and I love that I got to share them with someone who is so important in my life. After my charla, we got to go to Alex's party to celebrate the end of her fitness class. We had a great time dancing with the ladies and the kids, but it was so sad to see Alex leave for the states the next day. She is such a beautiful member of our little intern family, and it was really hard to say goodbye.

Wednesday was a really special day for a lot of reasons. My dad, Rick, Wilfredo and I went on an adventure to Santa Matilde to find and meet the boy that Rick sponsors. We thought we would be looking for him for at least an hour because Santa Matilde has over 300 families. But God clearly had his hands all over that day because Rick's sponsor kid was standing about twenty feet away from the spot where we got out of the taxi. We got to meet his grandmother, his two brothers, and his mom. We even got to visit the church and hear him sing the Spanish version of "Here I am to Worship" with one of his friends. Of course, my dad and I couldn't resist getting up there and singing the English version right afterward.

It was a great morning, and to make it even better, we followed it with lunch at Tip Top (which is basically fast food fried chicken, so I went and got a salad at Subway) and an afternoon at the pool with Sharon and Steve! They stayed at Hotel Los Volcanes, which is only about ten minutes from the Amigos house. I had an incredible time relaxing at the pool with the SUMC folks, eating some yummy appetizers, and taking a hot shower (thanks again Sharon and Steve :) ).

On Thursday, the interns said goodbye to two more beloved members of our intern family - Courtney and Christian. But I know I'll see them back in Atlanta in the fall, and I already can't wait!

Thursday morning was a busy day of digging. The group finished up the last bit of work on the main line of the water system in El Chonco! It was a hugely exciting day, and it means that this week, we will be able to turn on the water in El Chonco for the first time!!! After lunch, though my dad was anxious to head back to work digging trenches to lay pipe leading up to people's houses, I dragged my dad to the home of my friend Ana. After my charla on Tuesday, she promised me a Thursday cooking lesson.

Ana showed me how to make sopa de guajada, and it was undoubtedly one of the best things I've eaten all summer. You first mix corn flour and water to make a dough. Then you mix in chiltoma (green pepper), onions, some kind of spice that might have been cumin, crumbled up guajada cheese, and one egg. You make little patties out of that and fry them, but you leave some of the mix aside to make the soup. You add water to the left over mix, boil it, at salt to taste, and then throw in the fried patties. It sounds sort of weird and different, but I promise you that it was delicious. And best of all, it was gluten free!

I thought that maybe Ana would just give us a taste of what she was making, but she sat us down in her house for a full meal. She even set up her fan to cool us off while we ate. She didn't really have a dining table, so she put us at the table where she prepared the food. I wish more than anything that we could build Ana a new kitchen like the one Amigos is working on for her neighbor, Lucia. She is so generous and loving, and if anyone deserves a dining table where her family can enjoy a meal together, it is this beautiful woman.

We thanked Ana profusely and left to meet up with the group. We had the usual hour or so to play with the kids before piling onto the bus. Just before we headed out, Ana's little daughter, Sarai, came running up with yet more food for me! She gave me the biggest corn tortilla I'd ever seen in my life and some kind of delicious jam. I just couldn't believe the generosity and friendship that Ana had shown to me that day. It made me reflect on all of the things I guard and keep to myself. How important are material possessions really, and how much more joy could I get out of sharing them? Ana taught me so much more that day than how to make soup, and I will always be thankful for that.

Friday was a morning of work at Villa Catalina for the group (I took that time to enjoy my first couple of hours of office time in weeks) and an evening at the beach. It was really great to hang out with my dad on the bus ride and then chill at the beach with the Sugarloaf guys, Maureen, Charlotte, and Sandy (three of the ladies in the mission group).

It was hard to say goodbye to my dad and SUMC the next morning, but I was really glad that they all came down. It was definitely a week that I won't forget.

Nica homestay

Yesterday was pretty surreal. I had pretty much my normal day – charla in El Chonco in the early morning, hang out with my best Chonco friends until lunch (yesterday it was Ana, a 26-year-old mother of two who is as sweet as can be and really fun to chat with), work a bit in the early afternoon, and take shelter from the pouring rain until we left around five. There were a few medical consults with Brittany’s dad (a pediatric plastic surgeon who is down for the week) and with Dr. Christian sprinkled into the mix, but it was pretty much a typical Tuesday.

When I left El Chonco, my Tuesday shifted from my normal to a more Nicaraguan normal. My evening pretty much turned into Wilfredo’s day. Wilfredo is one of my Nicaraguan friends. He lives in Villa Catalina, a community that Amigos pretty much built. They built the houses there, put in a school and health center, and have several ongoing projects there, like Young Life (Vida Joven) and the after school programs. Villa is where they moved people from the Chinandega garbage dump, people who were placed in the dump by the government when Hurricane Mitch struck and who were basically stuck.

Villa Catalina is Wilfredo’s home. His house, like all of the houses that Amigos built there, is small and sturdy, with two bedrooms and a main room, a kitchen in the back, and a latrine and shower in the backyard. On this particular Tuesday night, I stayed in a home in Villa just like his with a woman named Fatima and her two children, Junyelki and Sol. My friend Megan, a nurse from Minnesota who lives in Nicaragua full time, has been staying with Fatima two or three nights a week for the past few weeks. She’s been thinking of moving out to Villa Catalina full time, so this is kind of a trial run. I asked Fatima (in my nervous, broken Spanish) if I could come and stay one night that Megan was staying, and she instantly welcomed me to stay any night I wanted.

So when the bus pulled over to drop Wilfredo off on the way back from Chonco, I got off, too. As usual, Benito, the bus driver, forgot to stop at Villa and stopped instead about a third of a mile down the road, but it gave Wilfredo and I a chance to catch up. It was surreal walking to Villa knowing that I wouldn’t be returning to Casa Blanca for dinner or taking a shower like I usually would after a normal work day. The sun was setting, and I was about to settle in for the night at the home of a woman I had met twice. In rural Nicaragua. Weird.

I got there and was welcomed in by Junyelki, who had clearly been awaiting my arrival, and then by Megan, who was watching a sketchy copy of Jungle Book with Junyelki. Fatima came out to say hello and show me to my bed for the night. As I dropped my stuff off and changed into a clean, dry shirt, she fixed me a plate of food (rice, some chicken dish with tomatoes and onions, and a corn tortilla) and then headed out for a special church service. I ate and hung out with Megan and Junyelki, and when Fatima came home and the kids went to bed, we sat around and talked for about an hour and a half.

It was fun to hear Fatima’s stories. She told us about how things were going at the health center and told stories about the Bland kids and some of the other people who have been down here several years in a row. She also told us about her husband, who works 24 hour shifts every other day. And about the neighbor, who gets up at 3:30 AM to start making tortillas because people start coming to buy them at 5. But tomorrow the neighbor probably wouldn’t be making tortillas because her daughter has something akin to the measles. Everyone knows everyone in Villa Catalina in a way that no one seems to know their neighbors in Atlanta.

We went to bed at 9:30 because Megan and I had to leave around 6 this morning (the Amigos staff were leaving to climb San Cristobal, so Megan had to be back for that). I had never experienced darkness as black as when we turned the lights off in Fatima’s house last night. Rural Nicaragua is DARK. The only time I really sit and think about the fact that I’m in Nicaragua is when the sun goes down, and it’s much darker in the rural communities than in Monserrat, where the interns live. It was really cool.

My bed was hard, almost like a bed frame that is meant to have a mattress on top of it, but I slept really well anyway. Fatima made Megan and I some sort of fried cheese-filled tortilla for breakfast, and we went on our way. It was a really fun night and a great experience. I would love to spend a whole summer living full time in Villa and working full time at the health center. Maybe it’s something I’ll consider for my summer off between my two years of nursing school...

Vacation Week!

This past week, the whole Amigos staff and all of the interns took a much needed week off to go on vacation. We first headed to Playa El Coco, a beautiful beach on the Pacific coast near San Juan del Sur (which is pretty much the closest you can get to Costa Rica on the Pacific side). We stayed in big beach houses, lounged at the beach, cooked a lot of great food, and just enjoyed spending time with each other away from the mission teams.

After four nights at the beach, we headed to Granada, an artsy, bohemian city near Managua. We stayed there for a night in a hotel with both air conditioned rooms and hot showers! After 8 weeks, I had forgotten how much I appreciated a hot shower. Granada is a beautiful colonial city with great architecture and great restaurants. We had salads at the Garden Cafe and omelets at Kathy's Waffle House. I almost felt like I was back in the States, and it was sort of nice to be in a little more tourist-y town for a day.

Here are some pictures from my week on vacation:

Annie and I chilling in front of the restaurant

Me, Brittany, and Courtney at the beach

Rock climbing adventure with Annie, Caitlin, Nidia

Breakfast at Kathy's Waffle House in Granada

Part of the main square in Granada

The main cathedral in Granada

More of beautiful Granada :)

Boat tour (notice the monkey's in the tree)

Sick Days

The lifestyle of a missionary can be difficult because it's often busy and physically demanding. So when you're sick, everything sort of stops.

This was my experience this week. I started out the week with strangely swollen lymph nodes. My whole throat seemed swollen, and I was popping ibuprofen and tylenol as much as possible to combat the pain. I had an ultrasound to make sure it was nothing more than an infection, and thankfully, it wasn't. But that pretty much consumed my entire Monday because of the associated waiting. We went to the ultrasound place and had to come back later because they were so busy. Then we had to wait for about an hour and a half when we came back because the doctor was out to lunch and there were several patients ahead of me. So there goes Monday.

Tuesday, I struggle through a little charla on gardening. It actually played out as Sabrina and I planting carrot seeds in about 10 families' gardens in El Chonco. It was really neat to see the existing gardens that people in El Chonco had - pretty much every house we went to had some sort of garden, and some of them were incredible! They grew all sorts of herbs, peppers, cucumbers, limes, and probably several other things that I can't remember. It was fun, and I was glad that Sabrina was willing to sort of take the reigns because I still felt miserable. But I stuck out a whole day in El Chonco and had a great time digging and chatting with the group in the afternoon. We had a stellar group this week, and though I got to talk to most of them, I wish I had had time to get to know each and every person. They never complained, worked harder than any group I had ever seen, and had great hearts for the Lord and for the work we're doing here in Nicaragua.

Wednesday was rough. It was a definite sick day, and I didn't want to talk to anyone. But on Thursday, I switched to a new antibiotic, and by yesterday, I was feeling way better. I'm almost back to 100%, and it's just in time for vacation week! Tomorrow, we're heading to the beach for four nights and then Grenada for one night. I can't wait to have a fun, restful week with all of the awesome staff and interns :)