“Sore Feet in Paradise” or “Out of the Mouth of Babes”

I couldn’t choose between the two above titles, so I went ahead with both. The first one is a wonderful experience that was worth the sore feet. The second one is a disgusting, horrendous event that I am glad I did not witness, even though my wife was put into harm’s way, so to speak.

“Sore Feet in Paradise”

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to cover our territory well with the tract campaign, we got a group of about 20 or so and took a bus to a place called La Solera. When we arrived at about 9am, we were told that the bus would depart for home at 2pm, and that we had better be on it. Then, we dispersed. Marlene and I were assigned to a group with 6 others to hit a part of the territory called “El Alquinal”. I’m not sure what it translates to, exactly, but it has something to do with an incline or something. And if it doesn’t, it should. We started off on a VERY steep walk for about an hour and a half, and we would go through patches where we would have to practically pull ourselves higher up by grabbing onto branches or roots. At the time, in the hot sun, with my water bottle quickly running low and my butter cookies nothing but a memory, I was badly wishing for a horse. But, at that angle, I’m not sure if I could have stayed on one. (When we were being assigned, no one wanted to go to El Alquinal, for some reason. Miriam, the German sister who is tougher than nails, told me, “No one can do it. It’s too hard, physically.” This, of course, prompted me to say, “I can do it! Let’s go!” So I volunteered Marlene, the Japanese brother Sumitaka, who unfortunately could not understand what I was getting him into, and the other two Japanese sisters).

At first, it was somewhat entertaining, as Sumitaka and the Japanese sisters had me going back and forth calling them insults in Japanese without me knowing what I was saying. I was sent by Sumitaka to Shigemi and told her, “Urusai, uza ushi”, which basically means “Shut up you demented cow”. It does sound quite crude and forceful in English, but perhaps it is less stinging in Japanese. Kind of how “stupid” in English is no big deal, but if you call someone stupid in Spanish you are liable to be slapped. On second thought, however, it probably is just as crude and forceful in Japanese, judging by the sister’s expression once I said it. Once she realized I didn’t know what I had said, she started laughing, which got everyone else laughing. But that was quickly put to an end, once we saw how little oxygen we had left, and how hard the climb was. The rest of the climb was either silent or filled with dire predictions of collapse and eventual death.

Once we got to the top, however, it was a completely different story. The air was crisp and clean, the sky was blue, there were fields of tall grass and bubbling brooks to cross over. It was very, very beautiful. At one point you could see the ocean beyond the mountain range and, in another direction, the peaks of the twin volcanoes on Ometepe island. It was gorgeous!



And the people that live up there are very hospitable and receptive, as well. Since we had to be back by 2pm, unfortunately, we couldn’t stay and talk long, but we had a couple of good conversations. (I asked Everet when we could go back to follow up on the interest, and he didn’t know. This was the second time Miriam had been up that high in the last 6 years.)



One particular visit stood out a bit. As we walked down the trail, Miriam pointed out a small church and said that the pastor lived behind there. No one else wanted to go so I volunteered myself and Marlene. We went up to the pastor, who was sitting out on his porch with an enormous baby boy, and we got into a good conversation about what happens at death. I read him a few scriptures, and he asked if I could give him a Bible, as he didn’t have one. (Yes, he is a pastor without even a Bible!) I actually had one with me, in my backpack, but I told him perhaps another day. I just had a funny feeling about it, since he said he wanted one in order to teach his “flock”, and I felt I would be contributing to false religion in some way. But, upon our return to the group, I asked them about it, and they convinced me that it would be best to give it to him, that he might perhaps see that what the tract says is actually in the Bible, and that perhaps it would move him to preach the truth and receive further help during future visits from Witnesses. So I volunteered Jackson, a brother who was assigned to work with Miriam, to go back with me to the pastor. (Jackson is an unusual name for a Nicaraguan, so I asked him about it. He actually said he was named after Michael Jackson. I asked him to do the moonwalk, and he looked mildly insulted, until I showed him I couldn’t do it either.) So we gave the pastor his bible, and he started flipping through it. Next time we go through there, if we ever do, I will bring a Bible teach book and see what happens.

So we made our way through the rest of El Alquinal, and finally wound our way down through actual rainforest with very dense, vine-covered thick red trees and about 10 small rivers.





And mud. Lots and lots of mud. We finally made it to the paved road leading back to where we were supposed to meet. At this point, my feet were pretty sore, and I had cut up my Achilles tendon area somewhat, so it hurt to walk. The others weren’t faring too much better either. But what kept us going was that we knew we would soon be sitting in a nice bus, off our feet, with a nice wind in our faces and hair. Unfortunately, when we got to the meeting point, we had missed the bus by about 2 minutes! We were stranded. We just had a good laugh and decided to wait for a “taxi”, which meant just a person with an empty car heading to the “city”. (The “City” is Santa Teresa, which seems like it has about 1000 people, but is much larger than the rural areas).

We ended up finally taking a “taxi”, which at first seemed to be improbable. It was a small car, very barely able to seat 5, and we were 8. But in true Nicaraguan fashion, we all managed to pile in, sitting among twisted limbs. We got on our way, and about 10 minutes later, we pulled over. “What in the world is he doing?” I asked. There was a woman on the side of the road, needing a ride to the “city”. I laughed and muttered, “Doesn’t she see that we are crammed like sardines in here? Jackson practically has his butt hanging out the window, and she thinks she can get a ride?” But, amazingly, the driver said, “Go ahead, I’m opening the trunk.” I just gasped, and saw as she pulled open the trunk, sat on the frame, and held on to the trunk-lid for dear life. We took some hairpin turns, and I kept expecting her to fall off and roll down the mountainside. It was really weird.

Unfortunately, I had to take the next couple of days off from service because my feet were pretty much cut up, but I am now good as new and back in the saddle.

“Out of the Mouth of Babes”

The day after our trek through the rainforest mountain, I stayed home because of my sore feet and I figured I could get some secular work done. What I didn’t expect was to dodge a bullet as well. A very nasty, slimy, disgusting bullet.

When Marlene arrived from service, she walked in and immediately got in the shower. This is not unusual, as we do this whenever we get back from service (it is so stinking hot that we immediately take our now-friendly cold shower and change into some shorts and a light shirt). After her shower, she proceeded to explain that she had had a wonderful day in service, had crossed a few rivers in her bare feet, all the things that are now usual in our day to day lives. Then, she explained the “Roberto” situation.

Roberto is a very nice, chubby, and cute little 10 year old boy. He always smiles and takes it upon himself to invite us over for dinner from time to time. His mother is a single sister raising him and his two sisters, and she has done a very good job raising them in the truth. We have played Monopoly with them a few times and enjoyed other evenings with them. Roberto, however, has a very peculiar problem. When he eats a lot, he tends to throw it all up. (Hence the title of this section of the blog.)

I’m not talking about an eating disorder or anything. I suspect he has acid reflux, or perhaps gastroesophageal reflux disease, and just doesn’t know it.

Anyway, as Marlene explained it to me, they were up in the mountainside, and they all decided to sit in the grass under the shade of some nice trees and eat some lunch. Eduardo, Roberto’s cousin, had brought along a very large meal consisting of tortillas, rice, beans, and several “soy-meat” steaks. Why anyone would eat soy-meat is beyond me, but I have heard that it is quite common. So this kid shovels it all in, rubs his full belly and smiles, satisfied.

Then they decide to get in the car with Everet, Silvia, Marlene, and Emily. (Everet has a car and often takes it with him, giving a ride to whoever can fit. On this particular occasion, Eduardo and Roberto were going to take the bus back, but Marlene and Silvia insisted they ride back with them.) So, in order to keep the three sisters comfortable in the back, Eduardo sits in the front seat with little Roberto on his lap, enjoying the ride. As they draw near to Santa Teresa, however, Roberto has that familiar feeling of his lunch deciding to leave his stomach the way it came in, and he puts his hand over his mouth. Eduardo notices this and begins to tell Everet, but all Roberto can do at this point is point his head in the general direction of the open window. This resulted in not getting the entire car horribly soiled, but it unfortunately also resulted in the wind flinging a lot of his vomit into Silvia’s face and Marlene’s shoulder. (Marlene got off really easy). Later, when I inquired of Silvia about it (trying to keep a straight face but not succeeding), she initially thought that a bird had pooped into the car somehow, and that it had landed on her face. As she smeared it away, however, she could see that it contained rice and soy-meat, and started to cry out in shock and horror.

They pulled over and Roberto sheepishly tried to clean some of the mess off his shirt and off his cousin. His cousin got drenched.

Silvia and Everet cleaned the car as best they could afterwards. Later that day, they invited us to go to Jinotepe with them, and I said, “Okay, but let’s take the bus, all right?” (I’ve heard that puke-smell is notoriously hard to get out.) So we took the bus. Later on Roberto called Sylvia and apologized for throwing up in her car and on her face, although we suspect that his mother, terribly embarrassed, made him make the call.

SERVICE

As far as service is concerned, we are actually very relieved that the campaign is over. We truly enjoyed it, but Marlene and I had not had a chance to do any real return visits or cultivate interest and start some studies. I have, at this time, 8 studies and quite a few very promising return visits, which I’m sure will study, and one older man, a shoemaker, who is already studying without knowing he is studying. There is one, however, that was a bit frustrating for me. He is an evangelical who fiercely believes that all good people will go to heaven, and that all bad people will go to hell. He is the owner of the hardware store I told you about previously. We reasoned with him quite a bit, showing scriptures involving the 144,000, what they do there, why they go to heaven, and what the hope is for the majority of God’s people. He has admitted that Lazarus in the parable of the “Rich man and Lazarus” could not have been in Heaven (John 3:13). But he still didn’t want to reason; saying that Lazarus must have been in a different dimension or something. He actually tried to get me to watch a video entitled “Invited to Heaven”, from his pastor. This, and other little things, have convinced me that he is not really trying to find out the truth, but is instead trying to teach me his beliefs. So I decided to not continue the study with him. If he had accepted even one Bible scripture that we reviewed, I would have continued. But every single scripture that contradicts what he believes, he ignores. He even told me that it’s stupid to pay attention to the so-called “Old Testament” since it has no bearing on anything anymore. (I got a little upset at this and prayed to Jehovah to help me keep calm, which he did, thankfully.) When I explained to him with 2 Timothy 3:15,16 and Romans 15:4 that all scripture is beneficial, he started getting loud and obnoxious. So, either this is not the right time for him, or he is not correctly disposed, but time will tell. But our time is way too precious to waste on someone that just wants to argue. A couple of times he has stopped me on the street, trying to pawn off one of his religious videos on me, but I’ve become quite firm with him lately, and so I think he won’t be doing it anymore, hopefully.

Other than that, service has been very much the usual. We are finding people that are interested in the Bible every day, and we are finding many that have a good, basic knowledge of a lot of Bible teachings. The hard part is actually figuring out whether they are humble and if they are willing to apply what the Bible says, especially what it says regarding meeting together.

One thing that is amusing and somewhat frustrating, at times, are the evangelical “preachers”. They have taken to trying to imitate us. They will go out two by two, dressed nicely, with their Bibles in their hands and with tracts in little cases. Sometimes you will see a couple and a child preaching in the streets. I suppose they might go door to door, but I’ve only seen them walking in the street. It’s a little bit frustrating because you start to think that Witnesses might not be seen as something special in the eyes of the neighborhood, or that we might just be one of many who seemingly do the same thing. But that frustration doesn’t last once you actually talk to the householder. They never ask us what religion we are because they already know, so there must be something about us that is different in their eyes. Also, when you actually start teaching them, they can tell we are very different. For example, at one study that we have, when I mentioned that we are all sinners, the wife said, “It’s so refreshing to hear you say that. The evangelicals say that they don’t have any sin anymore.” I then read to her 1 John 1:8, which says “If we make the statement: ‘We have no sin’, we are misleading ourselves and the truth is not in us.” They smiled when they heard that. Also, the evangelicals, as I’ve mentioned before, get smashing drunk on the weekend just like everyone else. And another thing is that they might preach, but they don’t last. No one ever sees the same person or same couple preaching. I think it’s some sort of thing that only new ones do for a few days or weeks and then they stop.

THE DISTRICT CONVENTIONS

I say conventions, in plural, because we had to go to 3 different conventions the last 3 weeks. As I mentioned in the last post, I had the privilege of having an interview during the Friday morning session. Happily, Marlene also was asked to be included (She did fantastic! I think her Spanish is getting a lot more conversational, although she doesn’t think so.). The thing is, though, that we had to give it at 3 different conventions. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think it’s because there might not be enough brothers to handle the talk that includes the interview, so they assigned the brother, and therefore the interviewees, to three different ones. The convention that our congregation was assigned to, however, was the last one, December 12-14, so we got in a bit of practice before that one.





Also, these last three weeks have been quite costly for us, because after each time we’ve been to Ticuantepe, we (Us and the Lau’s) have gone to Managua to eat. The first time was a wonderful reunion with McDonalds, where I almost cried from sheer joy. (I was no longer a big fan before we left the States, what with that bloated, brick-in-your-belly feeling you get courtesy of Mickey D’s, but after 2 months of eating rice, beans, and chicken, you start yearning for that fat greasy Quarter Pounder, believe me!) The other occasions we’ve experimented with a Mexican restaurant, an American ribs place, and a couple of other restaurants and, while our tummies were blessedly full, our wallets weren’t. It’s amazing how much money you can spend if you really want to!!

We even got to see a couple of good movies, and instead of paying the $10 ticket plus the $35 popcorn/coke combo, the tickets are about $3 each and the food is dirt cheap. The weird thing with the theaters, though, is that they run the current movies and they also run movies that we saw about 10 years ago, all in the same mega-plex stadium seating theater (“Coming Soon! Sleepless in Seattle!”). And, for some reason, we got to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still” one day before it came out in the States. We don’t know how it happened, but whenever we ask why something happens, we always get the same response, “This is Nicaragua!” Ah yes, the land where you either get chased down the street by mask-wearing machete wielders or get to see blockbuster movies before those Imperialist Americans do! (More on the mask-wearing machete wielders below.)

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE MANAGUA

Some of you might have heard of the recent trouble in Managua. They had some elections about a month ago for the mayors of each town, and the winning party was accused of rigging the elections and throwing away thousands of ballots that had been cast for the eventual loser. We have no idea if this is true, and we really don’t care one way or another, of course, but it got a little hairy for a while. There were busloads of political activists going from all over to Managua, but not really to “activate”, or whatever it is that they do normally. They were armed with machetes that were supposedly given to them from the government (this was suggested because some of the friends saw on T.V. that the “activists” had new, shiny machetes, and so they concluded that “the government must have handed those new machetes to them! No one has shiny machetes!”) and went up to Managua, where they all started rioting with masks on their faces and one reporter either got stabbed and injured or stabbed and killed. We have heard that others have been injured and/or killed, although we can’t corroborate any of it, because every time I turn on the news they are talking about the latest soap operas or I get too tired of the Spanish and switch the channel. (Yes, I know I was raised in Spanish, but it is just very strange, and I have a very low tolerance for it. We actually have cable, and CNN is on a lot, but they haven’t run anything on it as far as I know).

Anyway, the good thing is that it is now completely over, and none of it ever reached here to our little town. Probably because the entire town seems to be allied with the winning party, and so no fights broke out.

As far as our daily life goes, it continues much the same. We are very busy and our routine is much more stable now. Almost TOO stable. Some of you know that I’m not a big fan of routine, and so I get a little stir-crazy sometimes and I need a breath of air once in a while. But the conventions, with theaters and good restaurants nearby, did the trick.



We are also looking forward very much to my parents visiting in late January, as that will be a break from the routine and we can go and have some fun. After that, when I get really bored again, it will be time for the circuit overseer’s visit, and then after that the Memorial season, and then after that who knows. Time is really flying by for us, and we are still having a blast. We haven’t gotten sick yet, and so we are hoping that stays the same as well. And we are very, very thankful that we have cable TV, which means we get ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN, and other american channels. We’re much too busy to watch a lot of TV, but we like to occasionally get our fix.

Well, this is it for now. You might have realized that I am not writing as often anymore, and that’s not because we are too busy or because we don’t have time. I love writing to you all and letting you have a glimpse of life here. It’s just that lately, there hasn’t been anything really out of the ordinary that has happened. You can only read so many times about us crossing rivers in our preaching campaign, or how I long to keep a horse in the house, or how we chase the monkeys from tree to tree trying to get a good picture. So, when something out of the ordinary happens, I will write. I expect that my posts will be once or twice a month, but I will let you all know as I post them, as I have been doing up to now. Of course, if any of you have any questions or would like to make a comment on anything, you can e-mail us or give us a call.

Stay safe, take care of each other, and keep serving Jehovah faithfully. We will try our best to do the same!

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R.O.U.S´s, Horses, and Monkeys, Oh My!

It is quite amusing to me, as I sit down and write this while I try to sort out my feelings on our new home, to see how many different emotions come up regarding the word “Nicaragua”.

A year ago, it was just a thought, not even a dream, really. A semi-possibility of doing something more, if we could pay off debt, rent out our home, and find a way to support ourselves financially while living in a foreign land and preaching every single day. Then, after reading the 2003 Yearbook on Nicaragua (which I encourage you to read), we decided to just do it. We told Jehovah that we would like to do it, that we would do our part in trying to pay off debt, etc., but the rest would be up to him. Well, you can see very well what his answer was. Here we are!

When we told our friends and family back home that we would be moving here to help out in a greater need area, there were some mixed reactions. Some felt we were nuts and would soon snap out of it. Others felt that we were trying to do our best in serving Jehovah and were thrilled for us. Others looked at us with sad eyes, shaking their heads, wondering where our funerals would be held once the vicious kidnappers and guerilla fighters had their way with us. For our part, however, we felt that it would be a sin not to go. How could we sit through a talk encouraging us to do the most we can for Jehovah, while having the circumstances to do just that but preferring to stay in our comfort zone?

So, we took the plunge into the deep end of the pool and went to a country in Central America that we had never stepped foot in before. And you know what? We are starting to create our very own comfort zone here already! The brothers and sisters, you are always told, are the same everywhere. We all speak the same pure language of truth and have put on the same new personality. And it is true! We are seeing it for ourselves.

Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of Jehovah - that is what makes rich, and he adds no pain with it.” Yes, we have only a tiny fraction of the material things we had back home (and we didn’t have much back home, ha ha). The money we live off per month would not last us 10 days back in the States. We don’t have much in the way of entertainment, no movie theaters, no Applebee’s or Olive Garden or gourmet Chinese food (I’m getting hungry now!). But we are rich! We have wonderful evenings in fellowship with our brothers and sisters, where we discuss deep Bible subjects, field service, and play games. We find human treasures in service. We feel the warmth and love of the congregation. We feel the deep appreciation that the brothers, including the Bethel branch, have for us and the other foreign pioneers that have decided to make this their home in support of Kingdom interests. And we have Jehovah, who is with us wherever we may go on this planet. We are keenly aware of his hand helping us and guiding us.



We have only been here about 7 weeks, but we are having the time of our lives and we know that it will only get better and better as we get busier in service and in the congregation, and as we get to make more and more friends here. Now, although Jehovah does not add any pain to his rich blessings, we DO have certain pains of the more fleshly type. For your sympathy (or gleeful pleasure), I present:


R.O.U.S’s.


R.O.U.S’s, if you’ve seen the classic movie “The Princess Bride” is a rather comical phrase. For us here in Nicaragua though, it stands for Roaches Of Unusual Size. We will see one just about daily. (Jehovah instructs us to abhor what is wicked. Marlene saves a little bit of that for R.O.U.S’s.) Some of them are disgusting and rather stubborn to die. They run when they see you, knowing that their end is at hand and fainting out of fear and expectation. Others have sadly stepped into the Raid that we spray from time to time and are dying agonizingly slow deaths, probably having their lives flashing before their eyes, from when they were born with their hundred brothers and sisters, flicking their little antennae back and forth during play time, to finding that special roach lady or roach man, having a few hundred babies, going out to pick up a few crumbs for the kids back home, and running into the executioner on the way back.... Either way, it falls to me to be the death-dealer in our home. Usually it is just a smack with a sandal, and it is mercifully over rather quickly. Other times they are rather resourceful and climb up to the pila (a wash basin in the patio), and hide in a little corner, so then I have to turn on the faucet and drown the poor things. Once Molly, our little Shih-Tzu, decided to give Daddy a little help and I found one with the lower half of his body eaten off. Now that was disgusting (Marlene has a fear that one morning Molly will bring her a little gift in bed; a gift of the small, wriggling kind. And yes, that fear will probably come true one day). Now, killing R.O.U.S’s is not very difficult, and it doesn’t bother my conscience murdering them, as I take no pleasure in it. But it is rather dirty work, and it does wear on you. Especially when you accidentally step on one with only a thin sock on your foot. Thankfully, we have not seen any in our shower. That would make Marlene move out of the country. Personally, I think that the R.O.U.S’s are not stupid and they probably think that only idiots are crazy enough to step in that ice cold shower to freeze their noses off.

And now on to more pleasant subjects.


HORSES


A couple of weeks ago we were getting a little stir crazy. We are not used to living in such a small town and especially not having a vehicle. So we were really bored out of our minds when Sylvia and Emily invited us to go to Masaya. Masaya, we’ve heard, is a nice town about 45 minutes away with good food and little shops with souvenirs. It is also very close to Catarina, which has the Laguna de Apoyo (I encourage you to Google “Laguna de Apoyo”. It is beautiful!)

So, we were very excited to go, looking for a little break from the feelings of confinement we were starting to have. We were set to go on Friday, but unfortunately it rained very heavily and we were unable to go. Saturday we had our Watchtower and Public Talk (which is usually on Sundays but was switched over because of religious festivals going on in the city on Sunday, and it was felt that it would be too noisy to have an effective meeting), so we were able to go on Sunday.

Masaya truly is a beautiful city. We happened to arrive during their 199th anniversary, and there was a little folkloric dance thing happening, which was neat to see. The souvenir shops were very interesting, and I was able to get a hat, which really helps now that the sun is beating down on us. They had many many trinkets, beautiful art, hand-woven hammocks, hand crafted black pottery, and other strange beautiful things. For some reason, though, they also had hundreds of toads that had been killed and stuffed. These toads were usually paired two by two on a little wooden stand, and put into poses such as drinking a beer and even very lewd, obscene poses with each other. It was actually pretty sickening, and we both had the same thought: What a total lack of respect for Jehovah’s creation! And yes, we know that they are “just” toads, but still, it was pretty disheartening. They also had stuffed roosters which, for some reason, didn’t bother me as much. Perhaps it was because the roosters and hens weren’t forced to assume pornographic poses in death, like the toads were. Seriously, some people are just totally messed up.

After shopping in Masaya and eating lunch, we took a taxi over to Catarina, and we were dropped off at “El Mirador”, a local lookout point over the Laguna de Apoyo. The lagoon is in a large crater of a dead volcano. You may not be able to tell from the photograph, but the water was crystal clear and perfectly reflected the rising forested cliffs on either side of it, as well as the clouds in the sky.



We noticed that they were renting horses nearby, and I looked at Marlene and just nodded my head, smiling. She shook her head, saying, “no way!”. (Marlene thinks horses are beautiful, but she is a little afraid of them because they might start running and she fears falling off. Well, they did run, as I will explain in a bit, but although she bounced all over the place, she didn’t fall.) I went over anyway and asked the guy how much they were. Since they were $3 apiece, even Marlene knew that it was too good of a deal to pass up. That, and my incessantly sad puppy dog eyes did the trick. Sylvia didn’t want to go, so we took Emily with us, and wound our way through the cobblestone streets to another lookout point even more beautiful than the first one. The horses were pretty lazy, and we took our time getting up there. On the way back, however, I chose Marlene’s horse, which had shown a bit more spunk on the way to the second lookout point, and started pushing him to trot and gallop on the way back. Emily’s horse was pretty spirited as well, and we were soon racing through the streets of the sleepy town, laughing and catching up to one another. As one of us passed Marlene up, however, her horse chose to not be left behind and took off after us. At one point we were going so fast that my hat blew off my head (one of the “guides” that were running down the street after us picked it up. He probably thought we were running off with the horses, but he would at least keep my nice hat!). We finally made it back, with flushed excited faces. . . When I asked her if she had fun, Marlene smiled enthusiastically and nodded her head and said, “Just don’t ask me to do it again, okay? Ever?”


MONKEYS


Since I started reading up on Nicaragua about a year ago, I realized that in certain parts of the country there are monkeys. Namely, spider monkeys and howler monkeys. I must admit that I have always held a certain affection for the primates of the world, and I sometimes nurture a dream in which, in the New World, I would be able to train a group of 4 or 5 chimpanzees to do our laundry, wash the dishes, and keep up the general maintenance of our home, for which they would be richly paid in bushels and bushels of big, yellow bananas. And if any little bundles of joy would be born to us, why, I’m sure they could be trained to look after the children while we went traveling or riding horses through long meadows of tall grass and sunflowers. Is it a form of slavery? Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on the point of view, but why give them opposable thumbs if not for work, right? And they would look so adorable with little coveralls and straw hats, mowing my lawn.

Anyway, when we arrived in Santa Teresa, Sylvia and Emily told us that there are monkeys in the area, and that they sometimes see them while out in service. I was secretly saying “Whoopee! Yahoo! I want to see monkeys!!”, while outwardly appearing calm and saying “Well, I suppose that might be interesting….” But Marlene would just smile at me and shake her head, knowing my internal excitement.

So last week we were going out to a rural area which is quite a few kilometers away (I’ve quit trying to figure out things in miles), and after trekking through a narrow mud trail through what seemed to me like a jungle, complete with hanging green vines, we came upon a small clearing with a road leading out of it, towards the town in the far distance. As we got on the road, talking and laughing, we heard a surprisingly deep, resonating growl in the trees above us. It seemed to come from some very large beasts. I immediately broke out in a grin, because I had already read in books that howler monkeys are named for their deep, guttural hoots and howls that can be heard from a mile away. We all fell quiet and Sylvia and Frank motioned us over to the foot of a large tree. We hurried over as quietly as possible, and looked up. Thankfully Marlene had her camera!



We must have seen probably about 15 of them, some of them mothers with their tiny babies riding on their backs, clinging to their necks, jumping from branch to branch. They were very beautiful, and their low growls didn’t seem so intimidating once you saw the actual size of these rather small creatures. But I’ve been told that when they get angry they will either urinate on you or throw little lumps of excrement on you. It’s amazing to me that these little creatures know that they can insult you more by throwing their poop at you than by throwing a twig or a piece of fruit.

Now, to change the subject a bit before I wrap this up, service is going fantastic. Today we were walking down the street and noticed a man selling food or something, and we fell in step beside him. After some pleasantries, we offered him a tract. He asked us what religion we were, and when we told him that we are Jehovah’s Witnesses, he stopped and said, “I have a question for you. You say that the dead don’t feel or know anything, but the Bible says that we all go either to Heaven or Hell.” He asked me what I personally thought about this. I took out my Bible, and he started shaking his head no, saying, “What do YOU think?” I, of course, opened up the Bible and said, “I believe what the Bible says.” (Some of the more religious people seem to not like the Bible, which is quite odd)…

This opened up a very nice conversation in which I was able to use about 8 scriptures to prove that the dead are conscious of nothing at all, that the soul is not immortal, and that there is a sure hope for the dead to be resurrected here on earth and have eternal life. He admitted that he did not know how to read, but he listened very carefully to the scriptures I read to him. Later in the conversation I found out that he is a preacher who teaches a congregation of Baptists somewhere in town. It is amazing to Marlene and me that someone would lead others from the pulpit, not knowing how to check if what he himself believes is true. It is truly a case of the blind leading the blind!

Later on we went to the bakery across the street to pick up some bread and little treats, and we asked the store owner how he liked the tract we had left (the new campaign). He nodded his head and said that he liked what he read about the dead. His wife came into the conversation, wanting to know what we were talking about. I asked to borrow her Bible, and asked her what she thought happens to us when we die. She said, “Well, we either go to Heaven or Hell, right?” I didn’t respond, I just opened up the Bible, and she said, “That’s not right?” I said, “Well, let’s see what the Bible says.” I read to her Ecclesiastes 9:5,10, and she was shocked! She turned to her husband and said, “Did you hear that?” Then I showed her John 5:28, 29, but I noticed that she kept her finger in Ecclesiastes, not wanting to lose the place. After we reasoned for a bit on the scriptures, I turned her Bible back to Ecclesiastes so she could re-read it and mark it if she wants to. We think that we will have some good conversations with them from now on. It was really cool to see her reaction!

Another very interesting experience I had was at a hardware store in town. Marlene had left the owner a campaign tract last week and we were there looking for sponges, and we decided to ask him how he liked the tract. He said that he had enjoyed it, but that he was confused with the paragraphs on death. He said, “Why is it that in the Old Testament, it talks of death as being the end of existence, when in the New Testament it talks about going to Heaven and Hell?” I asked him for an example, and he was ready for it. “In Luke 16, Jesus talked about the Rich Man and Lazarus. One went to Hell and was burning there, while the other went to Heaven. It is very clear.” (I later found out that this is a topic that the Evangelicals use to combat us quite often. They teach this to their members, and so we get questions about it. I have NEVER had a householder bring this up in the U.S. before, and here I have already had 3 different people in the span of a week or two bring it up!) As it happened, we had stopped in on the way to a bible study that Marlene has, so we were unable to stay long and explain it (Thank Goodness! I haven’t researched that in probably 10 years…) He asked us when would be a good time to continue the conversation, and he said that he would be happy to close down his hardware store so we could discuss it. So we made an appointment for a few days later. Meanwhile I researched the topic and was ready with some very good scriptures that prove it was not a literal historical account, but rather a parable of Jesus. When we returned, we spent a good 40 minutes or so, but the conversation was unfortunately interrupted by a delivery truck and so we had to postpone it (Satan is not going to let him go that easy, I suppose). But he admitted that Lazarus could not have been in Heaven, although he still believes that he went somewhere. We have an appointment for this Friday at his house, and we will reason a bit more on the Scriptures together. Emily said that she was very surprised that he invited us in and even closed down his shop for us, since he has a reputation of not liking Witnesses and has even run some off his property. She came along for the visit in his store, and said that he had completely changed his attitude. Something must have happened in his life, so perhaps Jehovah is opening his heart. It remains to be seen if he is correctly disposed to everlasting life, but we will give it our best and see whether Jehovah makes it grow or not.

The other elder, Everet, finally returned last week and it has infused the congregation with some relief. Sumitaka is a very encouraging and humble brother, but the congregation was missing Everet. I have had the opportunity to work with him in service and he is a very zealous pioneer and also has a very positive attitude, which is refreshing. He is very happy that we have been assigned here.


THE CONVENTION AND SPECIAL MEETING


This past weekend we had a wonderful treat. We had the English District Convention at the assembly hall at the branch, and it was fantastic! It was like a miniature International Convention. Most of the foreigners serving in the country went, and we got to meet quite a few from the States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Spain, Scotland, Mexico, Italy, Germany, and other parts of the world (friends from 18 countries were present). Everyone present and everyone giving a part from the platform were people who have left their homes, family, and friends behind (at great cost!), to have a fuller share in the harvest work, including members from the Nicaragua branch committee and missionaries who have served here for the last 30 or 40 years. It was a very rich experience, and the quality of the talks were excellent. There were quite a few talks that were specifically tailored to fit our needs. It really emphasized how much of Jehovah’s spirit we need to continue serving here. We had one single baptismal candidate (there are only 2 english congregations in the entire country), and it was very moving because the talk was basically directed at him. He is from Bluefields, on the Atlantic coast (where they speak a Caribbean-type English and Miskito), and his congregation traveled together over 40 hours and spent over $2,500 (dollars) to be there at the convention. We all gathered around to watch his baptism, in this small, modest, but beautiful baptismal pool under the shade of a circle of trees, in a clearing on the Bethel property, and we all broke into applause as he was baptized and welcomed by all of us. It was very special.





On Sunday night we were invited to a special gathering that this couple from Italy had put together. It was at a very high class hotel ballroom, and there were about 90 present. It was a nice little buffet with some pretty good food, and a little bit of dancing, but the best part of it was the fellowship that we were able to have, and there were a lot of laughs when we all shared little details of our assignments and how we were all irritated and amused by the exact same things, no matter where in the country you were. R.O.U.S’s were a big thing we have in common. We are all so impressed by the lush, green, natural beauty of the country, and the field ministry. We are so amazed by the receptive spirit the people have. It has been rather difficult during the special campaign, because the people want you to sit down and talk to them about the Bible, and we have to explain that we are only being very brief this time around.

On Monday we had a very special experience. There was a special meeting that was open only to needgreaters (who are all at least regular pioneers), special pioneers, missionaries, and traveling overseers. The talks had such topics as “How to Overcome Challenges in Your Assignment”, “Keep In Step with Jehovah’s Organization”, “Jehovah Rewards Us”, and “Give Jehovah Your Best”. One suggestion that was made was to study our Large Reference Bible the way that Gilead students do, reading it and taking notes on the chapters we read, indicating footnotes that shed light on the meaning of certain scriptures, and perhaps from the All Scripture book. We were encouraged also to be careful of not forming “Foreigner cliques” in the congregation, not associating only with those who also speak English or who are serving there as foreigners, but to also have close association equally with the local brothers. The talk about challenges made us realize that, although sometimes we are exasperated and even have feelings of wanting to return home because of the unique challenges we face in a foreign field, there were challenges back home, too. Perhaps the challenges back home were different, such as not having enough time for study or service, etc., they were just as exasperating. The challenges here are merely of a different sort, but just as we have to rely on Jehovah in a developed country like the US, we have to rely on him (perhaps even more so) here in Nicaragua. We were also encouraged to not lose our joy in the assignment we have. Bethel tends to send us to an “easy” assignment first, where there are more foreigners with you (we have 12 in our congregation), elders and ministerial servants (we have 2 elders and 3 servants, which is A LOT in comparison with many other congregations), and more publishers (we have about 50 or so). Later, when Bethel feels you are ready, they may ask you to serve in a more difficult assignment, and we have to be careful to not lose the joy that we had in our “easy” assignment. We will pray to Jehovah that we can be well trained and ready, if that situation ever comes upon us. We also received some good recommendations and watchtower and awake articles to look up regarding staying healthy, so as to be able to continue serving here.



The Bethel family worked very hard to prepare the meeting for us. The speakers were VERY well prepared and very loving, and we were provided a buffet-style lunch with delicious chicken, rice, mashed potatoes, a colorful assortment of vegetables, and a nice dessert cake. The Bethel members that prepared the food had been up since 2:00 in the morning, even though they knew that they would not have a day off from Bethel work, but would have to do their customary work on top of working hard to prepare the meal. The servers were very happy and we could tell that they considered it a privilege to help us. What a wonderful example of hard work and joy they are!

Our Spanish district convention will be December 12-14, and we are really looking forward to it. We were thinking of not going, because we have already gone to the Spanish one back home in July, and we just had the English one, but it is our assignment, and the brothers would be hurt if we did not go. Also, I have a small interview that I am participating in, so now we kind of have to. But we will look forward to meeting more brothers and sisters, this time of the local type, which we are sure will be very encouraging.

On a final note, before I end this entry, I would like to say how Jehovah constantly amazes us, with little tiny seemingly insignificant things. Two things such as this happened to us.

On Sunday, we chose a seat behind a small family and Marlene tapped the sister on the shoulder to ask her if they were here on vacation, or were they serving somewhere? The sister turned around, and upon seeing Marlene, gasped! I quickly wondered if perhaps Marlene had a bit of tuna fish on her face or something, but the sister asked, “What is your name?” They quickly realized that this sister had been in Marlene’s very first congregation in St. Louis, and that her fleshly sister had been Marlene’s best friend! We spent probably an hour or so talking to them during the lunch intermission, and it was so nice to get to see Marlene from somebody else’s point of view. (At one point I swear I thought the sister say, “When you went to jail”, but she had actually said, “When you went to Gail”, a sister in a different congregation. It’s too bad I was mistaken, because that would explain quite a few things regarding my wife….) But seriously, what are the odds of this happening? Of us picking those seats? It must have been Jehovah.

Another such thing happened the last day we were at Bethel, on Monday. We had finished with lunch and the association with the friends, and were walking out to the car (we hitched a ride with Everet, Sylvia and Emily), and on the way there we saw this massive Land Cruiser parked in the Bethel parking lot. We walked up to the occupants inside and made some remark about how it looked like the perfect special pioneer vehicle. They asked us where we were from, and we said New Mexico. The brother in the driver’s seat looked astonished and took out a piece of paper from his wallet, asking us what our names were. As we answered him, he showed us the piece of paper, which said, “Luis and Marlene Ruvalcaba, Vista Hermosa Congregation, Rio Rancho, New Mexico”. Now it was OUR turn to be astonished! The brother, Matt Elliott, explained to us that he goes to a Spanish congregation named Delta, in Colorado. We immediately recognized that as the congregation where this family we studied with back in the States moved to. They are really our pride and joy, our “letters of recommendation (2 Cor. 3:1-3)”, because we helped both of them to baptism (Eileen, their little girl, is only about 4, but she already has the pioneer spirit and would cry if her mom didn’t take her out in service every day. If this system lasts she will be a missionary somewhere). When they found out that this brother and his family were coming down to Nicaragua for the English district convention, they wrote down our names and asked him to look for us and to send their love to us. They had looked all over for us all three days, and when do they finally find us? On our way out on Monday. They were literally the last people we talked to before we got in the car and left. We simply couldn’t believe it, and it was so cool to see that Jehovah maneuvered things even as seemingly unimportant as this. He is so generous!

Well, this concludes this portion of the blog. We are sorry we haven’t updated it in a while, but we have been especially busy with the special campaign work and the district convention, and the special meeting, and the partying, of course. But rest assured that we are enjoying ourselves more than we ever have in our entire lives, and we are SO thrilled to be used by Jehovah in this way. We certainly don’t deserve it, but we will gladly take it!





We love you, our dear friends, very much, and we pray to Jehovah concerning you so that he continues to bless your earnest efforts to preach his Kingdom and to stay neutral and very busy in these rapidly changing times. We hope that you ask Jehovah to bless our efforts as well.

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The Harvest is Great, but the Workers are Few...

This past week has been like night and day for us, compared to the first week and a half of setting up our living quarters.
We were starting to get a little bummed out because we were spending so much time just getting started! But, I’m happy to report, we are now active in service and are already starting to see some very wonderful results. We now can see why we came here, and we are so glad we did!

Of course, not everything is as we thought it would be. Things in life are usually like that, aren’t they? I mean, when you think of serving where the need is great, you don’t really imagine it raining nonstop so hard that you can barely open your front door, or having to watch every step you take so that you don’t step in a nice, fresh, steaming pile of horse poop. The field ministry, however, has really lived up to the hype. “Come to Nicaragua, and you’ll have studies coming out of your ears!” we were told. And we are pretty sure that it really is the case.

We have really been active in service for about a week, and Marlene already has two studies, one more possibly, and I have one. (Two of our studies will most likely be at the meeting this Sunday.) We both also have several VERY promising return visits. It is SO refreshing to actually be talking to someone where they don’t just nod their head and say “Uh huh, Uh huh, yes,” but actually THINK and ask questions, and give real answers from their hearts! My study, a man named Wilfredo, lives about three blocks from us, and during the first chapter of the “Qué Enseña” (Bible Teach) book, he put his book down and looked me straight in the face and said, “Why does God allow suffering? Doesn’t the Bible say he is a God of love? My family members help me when I have problems…why won’t God do the same thing, since he has so much more power than a human does?” I started smiling, rubbing my hands together for the nice Bible-based explanation that was to come.

On Monday we went to one of Marlene’s studies, a young woman named Carla. Her home is in a semi-rural area of our little town, and she has dirt floors and was cooking in a steel barrel that was cut in half and laid on its side in the corner of the home. I really wanted to take a picture so I could post it here, but I didn’t want to offend her. . . Marlene had promised to bring her a Bible and a book, and when she brought them out of her bag, Carla’s eyes lit up and said, “Finally! My very own Bible!” and immediately opened it and started looking through it. When we showed her how to find scriptures and pointed out the Table of Contents, she looked like she was listening to someone pointing out all the cool features in her brand new state-of-the-art Lexus. When we read to her in Isaiah how Jehovah will make blind ones see again in the new system, she asked, “Could that apply also in a spiritual sense? Could some people that don’t see spiritual things come to know God as he really is?” Just amazing.



Oh, and I forgot about another study that we have, together, with two little kids that used to study with a sister a long time ago in the Great Teacher book, but for some reason the sister stopped visiting. We think the sister was a foreigner who left. The boy, Beldin, was up to chapter 16, while the girl, Naomi, was up to chapter 11, when they stopped. It seems like they were studying separately, but I think we will do it together. They are cousins, aged 8 and 9, and are very excited to start their study up again. Naomi’s mother likes the Bible and wants to study, but she hasn’t taken the step yet because she likes to go to parties in the town, and when she used to attend meetings, people would point to her and say, “And she’s a Jehovah’s Witness, and going to parties!” So she stopped attending meetings. But several of her family members are Witnesses.

In Santa Teresa, Witnesses really ARE under the microscope. The brothers won’t even buy beer here, because they will totally be judged negatively by the local people. So whenever they want to get some nice rum or beer, they go to Jinotepe and bring it in secretly. It’s like the Prohibition all over again! I think I will start brewing it in our little patio and have some friends over for “secret” meetings, ha ha.

One good thing that we have going for us here is that the town, like most of Nicaragua, has a strong evangelical presence. How is that a good thing, you may ask? Well, the good thing about it is that the evangelicals are total hypocrites, and everyone sees it. They go to their church where they play really loud party music and have their pastor scream non-sensical things like “We are serving God with our music, yeah! Turn up the music, let’s serve God more!” and then they go to the bars and get totally smashed. We’ve had more than a few people tell us that they are sick of the evangelicals and that they are no different than anyone else in the town.

One brother told me that the evangelicals try to get you to come, because they baptize you in a week and get to fatten up their membership roll. After about a month, most stop going to their meetings, but are still technically evangelicals. So when we preach to them and show them what the Bible really teaches, and since we already have a good reputation in the town based on the excellent conduct of the brothers that have been here before us, we have a lot of weight with what we say and the people really listen and reason on the scriptures.

We sometimes have a zealous evangelical open up the door who doesn’t want to reason on anything and instead tries to impress us with how godly they are, but they get all twisted up and finally shut up after just a minute or two. They just keep repeating all the gibberish they get from their pastors. It really is sad, actually. These poor people think they are doing good, and some of them really are sincere, and all the while it’s Satan, with his finger in the world even way down here, in the middle of nowhere.

We are, however, having extremely good results so far. I have one return visit that REALLY wants to study; he actually asked me to come again soon so we could go over the Bible Teach book together, but he lives so far away, kind of the outskirts, on the border of the forests… Sumitaka said I could borrow his bike, which I might do. I’m trying to convince Marlene to let me buy a motorcycle, but after some senile lady hit me while I was riding up in New Mexico, that’s probably not going to happen. I tried telling her that instead of a motorcycle, a horse might be a good investment. It doesn’t really break down, and they don’t eat that much, do they?...... but the look she gave me pretty much shut that door. Oh well. I will figure something out.

This is our little group on the way to the little town where my interested return visit lives...



On Tuesday we went to the town of La Conquista, which is a charming little town a few kilometers away, where we are taking care of a little group. The preaching there is wonderful, as well, and it’s such a delight to have people invite us in and say, “I’ve always wanted to know this about the Bible”, and proceed to ask questions. It’s such a small town, and we split up, and it’s funny to be walking up and down the streets and seeing the brothers and sisters through the windows of the homes, sitting down for a discussion with the householder or conducting a study. We run into each other quite often, as it is so small, and we basically blanket the little village in just a few hours. Here are a few pictures of us in La Conquista...







All in all, it is a total preaching paradise down here and we love it! So, together, we have 4 studies, most likely 5 in a few days, and probably about 3 others that will study relatively soon. All in a week’s worth of preaching! And of course, it’s not due to our talents. We aren’t even that good at this point. We kind of feel that in the States, we would prepare these presentations, but we seldom got to use them, so we never got really polished as teachers. Now, we start off with the presentation, and we are amazed at the results we are getting! Applying all these things that the faithful and discreet slave teaches us in the Theocratic Ministry School is really paying off! We are now preparing more than we ever did, because we know that at almost every door we will have a good conversation. We also know that we really aren’t anything at all except tools in Jehovah’s hands, but what a privilege that really is!

On another note, my manliness took quite a hit on Monday night. In retrospect, I really should not have behaved like a little school girl while my wife rescued me from, what I thought, was certain doom, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain. Monday night, I’m sitting at the desk in our bedroom, doing some work for the office back in the States, and someone is at the door. It’s Silvia and her daughter, Emily, who are already pretty good friends of ours, and have helped us a ton to get adjusted to life here. (We’ve spent a lot of time with them in service and just associating, while the husband, Everet, who is one of the elders here, is in the States working for two months. Emily is the little girl with me in the last picture.) It’s a pleasant surprise, and we welcome them inside and we start chitchatting, you know how it goes. She brought us a George Foreman grill, which is an absolute treasure. . .now we can have cheeseburgers, grilled chicken, toast, etc. We are so happy with it! So we’re sitting down, shooting the breeze, and I’m sitting in a chair where I have a perfect view of the kitchen. As we’re talking about certain things regarding Nicaragua and places we want to visit, out of the corner of my eye I see movement over by the fridge. All I can tell, with my peripheral vision, is that it is large, dark, and moving. My first instinct is that it’s a cockroach. For a split second, I think, “Okay, don’t make a big deal out of it (Marlene hates cockroaches more than anything else and screams when she sees a baby one doing nothing but sitting and getting some sunshine. . .we don’t get many in the house but she practically has a heart attack, and yes, she does scream. I mean that quite literally).” I just plan on getting up out of my chair and silently murdering it. However, this is what I think when I am seeing this moving object out of the corner of my eye. When I turn my head a little and see what it actually it is, I see that it is a mouse. Yes, a mouse. But to me, in my warped phobia for rodents, it is a giant man-eating rat, running its disgusting stinky tongue over its sharp yellow teeth, eyes glistening for the man-flesh that it’s about to enjoy….so I, like the little school girl that I was, yell “Oh no! Oh no!” and jump up on my chair. Yes. Literally. I’m standing up on my chair, pointing at Mickey and screaming “Kill it! Kill it!” At this point Marlene is practically running out the front door, thinking I saw a giant roach. Silvia and Emily are freaking out, turning to look into the kitchen, at which point Emily starts screaming too and jumps on the other chair. At this point, I realize that I might be overreacting a little bit. I jump down and tell Marlene “It’s a mouse!” and ask Silvia (since she is the one that knows everything about Nicaragua and how to handle pests), “Should I spray it full of Raid? Should I kill it with Raid?” She doesn’t answer immediately, she’s trying to get a look at the poor thing, and I grab her by her shoulders, practically shaking her, and say, “Tell me, should I spray the thing with Raid? Will it kill it?” At this point she sees Mickey and proceeds to freak out, running over by Emily. She tells me to kill it with the broom. I say, “What? I can’t beat a mouse to death!”

Marlene comes closer and says, “What? It’s a mouse?” She then goes into the kitchen and says, “I’ll just shoo it outside with the broom.” So she walks in there, and I start yelling at her about all the diseases that mice have, and when she starts poking behind the fridge with a stick, I jump back up on the chair and hold one of the dogs while Emily has the other one.

I suppose the mouse did run outside, because it certainly didn’t run past us into the dining room, and we looked for it all over the place in the kitchen afterwards. The back door was open, and Marlene has the opinion that since we were all screaming and jumping up and down, the mouse probably got fed up with us and left. Later that night, however, I awoke in bed with the terrifying thought that the mouse didn’t run out, after all. That it just hid somewhere, biding its time until it could crawl up on top of us while we are sleeping and crawl in our mouths or something. I thought of going into the kitchen and checking it out, but the thought of having a frenzied, squealing fight with a giant rat, blood spraying the walls while he gnaws on my face, didn’t appeal to me, so I just tried to get back to sleep.

I’m not really ashamed to put my girlish fright on display here. One must be as modest as possible. I can kill a cockroach with no thought of his wife or children waiting for him in his hole, wondering why Daddy hasn’t come back from picking up some crumbs yet. I’ve seen big flying cockroaches as well, in the Kingdom Hall, and just laugh. We have little gecko lizards crawling on our walls and I want to pet them. But mice? No way. I just can’t deal with it. It’s actually pretty funny. Marlene acted like she wouldn’t mind keeping the plague-carrying rodent as a pet, put a little leash around it and take it out in service, but she wants to jump out of her skin when she sees a little insect peering up at her.

Anyway, that is all for now, but I will definitely be keeping you all up to date, next week at the latest.

We love you all very much, and please keep us in your prayers, just as we constantly ask Jehovah to take care of you back home.

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Some pictures...

A few more pictures for you to look over...
Well, I was really looking forward to trekking to the campo on a dirt-bike and crossing a river to visit that sister, but I have come down with a cold and, the rain being the way it is, decided against it. However, next time the brother goes, I will go too.

Anyway, the days here have been kind of stressful and lazy at the same time. Stressful, because we had some things for the house that we still had to take care of, but lazy because there was nothing we could do for the present. I will explain a little bit more after some of these pictures.

You might remember I told you that our house was a horrid Pepto-Bismol pink and a yucky crayon-blue that defied all human decency. Well, with the help of some brothers and also some long days by ourselves, we finally got it presentable. Here are some pictures:







This is what most Nicaraguans wash their clothes with. I remember Daniel back home telling us that we would need to use this, and laughed at us.



Um, well, we are not THAT into self-sacrificing, so we got this:



This was one of the things, though, that wouldn’t work for a while, and so we could not wash clothes until just very recently. That definitely added a lot to the stress, but it’s now working. Unfortunately, because of the high humidity, our clothes don’t really dry, so we have to bring them in the house and put the fans on them.

This picture is just a taste of what it’s like outside when it rains. Our street turns into a miniature river.



And, finally, this is our new Kingdom Hall, which is actually quite beautiful and it’s only about 3 years old. There is usually a nice cross-breeze and with the fans going, it’s not bad.



Well, that’s all for now, but we will write again next week and share some nice experiences and pictures of our time in the ministry.

We love you guys a ton and your e-mails and comments have been very encouraging. Even after only a short time here, we have had a few occasional bouts of homesickness and near hysteria, but we have been told that it is a normal part of moving to a new land. And we are really enjoying this new avenue of service opened up to us, and we pray to Jehovah that we can be useful here and help others to draw close to our wonderful God.

Hasta luego!!

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Blood and Ice

This week has been pretty much a blur..
We have been so busy just trying to get settled into our new little house that we haven’t had much time for anything else. We have been out in service exactly one time, before we rented our house, and that’s it. Why, you ask? Well, part of the reason is because we have been up to our neck in paint and have been going to the markets in nearby Jinotepe practically every day to stock up on appliances, tables, chairs, soap, etc. Now, you may be thinking that we are idiots and that we should just cruise up to the local WalMart and buy whatever we need, right? Unfortunately, WalMart doesn’t exist here. Or fortunately, depending on what your point of view is regarding a behemoth corporation swallowing up the mom-and-pop shops and taking over suburbs. Personally, I love the giant behemoth corporation.

It’s kind of pathetic, really. You get an idea in your head regarding something you want to buy and you think it will mean maybe an hour of time and you’ll be fine. For example, today we went to Jinotepe to get a simple plastic table and four plastic chairs (you can get beautiful hand-carved wooden tables here for about $300 american, which is a steal….but in Nicaragua, it seems that the best way to go is to just get something that works. Plastic works beautifully!) We went to Palí, which is a grocery store/goods store actually owned by Wal-Mart. We asked, “Hey, do you sell plastic tables?” They laughed at us like we were idiots and told us to try the store next to the book store which is directly across from the Super Santiago, which is a store similar to Palí. So, we made our way through market stalls reminiscent of downtown Bangladesh, people hawking their wares, yelling across the narrow, puddle-filled corridors, dodging men pulling about 500 pounds of bananas and pineapples on wooden carts and dogs that generally avoid crossing your way unless they need to relieve themselves, and finally find the store. “Do you have any plastic tables?” we ask. Immediately comes a frown and the shake of the head. “No,” they tell us. “No one in all of Jinotepe has plastic tables. The prices went up suddenly, and they stopped coming. You might find some in Managua”. (Managua, by the way, is a superheated no-man’s land to people of the smaller towns. It’s a long, tedious trip and very frustrating.) We decide to try one more store and get the same response. As we wind our way back through the Bangladesh market stalls, Marlene stops at a stall that sells plastic bowls where a sister from the Jinotepe congregation works. “Why are you stopping?” I say, tired, wet, and wanting to go home (oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that by this time it had been raining all afternoon. Thankfully this time I expected it and brought my hooded poncho). “Let’s just see if they sell some here,” she says. I roll my eyes. “Didn’t you hear everyone at the stores we went to? They don’t sell them in Jinotepe anymore! Let’s just go home and try another town tomorrow!” She approaches the stall keeper anyway and asks if they have any tables. “Of course we do,” she answers, as if we are morons for thinking anything different. So, we were able to get the tables and chairs, and now we have somewhere to eat at home and when we have company!

Another example of strange Nicaraguan “logic” is the simple quest we had the other day for hangers. Now, the Spanish word for hangers is “ganchos”, right? Everyone knows this. So when we decide to get some ganchos, we ask someone at the Palí once again. “Ganchos?” they ask. “What do you mean?” “You know,” I say. “Where you put your clothes on and hang them up?” “Oh, you mean ‘perchas’”. “Perchas?” I ask. “Perchas,” I’m told. I roll my eyes at Marlene and give her a look that says, “What a retard, right?”. She, of course, nods in agreement with the store clerk. “Yeah,” she says. “That makes sense. It’s like when a bird perches on a stick. Perches, Perchas. Very similar.”

I fail to see what a bird perching on a stick and me hanging up my pants have anything to do with each other, but I just shrug my shoulders. “Okay,” I say. “Where are your perchas?”

“Oh, no,” the clerk says, shaking her head. “We don’t have any.”

“Ah, of course,” I say. So we hit the market stalls again. I go up to a fine looking gentleman and ask, “Do you have any ganchos?”

“Ganchos?” he says. “What are ganchos?”

“Oh, I mean Penchas.”

“Penchas?”

Marlene steps forward. “It’s Perchas!”

“Oh, perchas, yes, right over there.” He points at a bunch sitting in little bundles in a bucket. I walk over and pick one of the packages up. And what does it say? “Ganchos.”

We have also noticed, throughout our almost daily walks through Bangladesh lately, that Nicaraguans will give you an answer to any question you ask, even if they have no idea what the correct answer is. I think it’s because they don’t want to say “I don’t know” and look stupid. So they just make something up and say it with all the sincerity in the world. For example, today we had to get some money out of the ATM. Unfortunately, the banks were closed since it’s Saturday and they all close at 12:30pm. We actually came upon a bank whose “walk-up” teller was still open for another hour. “Do you have an ATM?” we ask her. She shakes her head no. “Do you know where we can find one?” She thinks for a moment and says, “What kind of card is it?” “Bank of America, from the US” we answer. She shakes her head again. “No, you won’t be able to use that one anyway.” This doesn’t really make sense to me, so I ask her again where the nearest ATM is. “Well, if you want to try, you will have to go to a gas station. That’s the only place you will find an ATM.” The idea of going to a gas station, with who knows who hanging around, and getting out hundreds of dollars, definitely does not appeal to me. We thank her and leave. “Well, what are we going to do?” we wonder. Because this particular evening we have invited the Japanese couple, Sumitaka and Akiko, to a nice dinner in Jinotepe as a thank-you for letting us stay in their house, even though they don’t like dogs and even though both of our dogs literally decided to defecate 2 feet away from them on their nice floor. (That’s another story for another time. It’s enough just to say that Sumitaka and Akiko have been well trained by Jehovah in the art of patience and a nice smile to smooth things over). So we find another bank literally right next door to the one where the lady told us there are no ATMS except for at a gas station. It’s closed, but the guard is locking up and we ask him if he knows of an ATM nearby. He says, “Of course, it’s just around the corner.”

So our adventures in shopping for basic household goods has been pretty much just like that.

We are slowly getting accustomed to being in such a small town. Santa Teresa is by no means jungle territory, but it has beautiful heavy forests and we are up in the highlands, so the air is much cooler than in Managua. October happens to be the most rainy part of the year, and we get huge torrential rains at night, around 9pm, like clockwork. We’ve never seen or heard such rains! It’s still deafening even though we actually have a paneled ceiling. A lot of the friends here have no ceiling, but instead have a corrugated metal roof and that’s it. That’s what they see when they look up. When it rains, it’s so loud you need to yell at each other just to be heard, even if you are in the same room!

The town itself is a sleepy little place with very friendly people. In the morning, Savannah (our older dog) likes to sit in front of the door and watch the kids walk by on their way to school, and the other less fortunate dogs scrounge around for forgotten or thrown away food. When one of the dogs gets too close to the house, she’ll give a ferocious bark and scare it away, and then settles down to watch the local life walk by again. The only things she doesn’t like, for some reason, are the horses. There are a few that go by regularly, some with riders and some without, and she just goes nuts when that happens, for some reason.

When we are out and about, we constantly pass people by, who are either sitting on their front porches doing the same thing Savannah does in the morning, or are doing some kind of work. When we pass by, the proper greeting is “Adios!” instead of “good morning”, for some reason. It was a little strange at first, but it’s easy to get used to.

As I mentioned above, we’ve only been out in service once so far, but it was a nice experience nonetheless. The first door we went to we were invited in and sat down on old worn sofas sitting atop a rocky, dirt floor. The old woman listened respectfully and agreed with everything we read to her from the Bible, and a teenager who had been working outside came in to listen. It was a little hard, however, to know whether they were really interested or whether they were just being polite. I’m sure that with time we will be able to tell the difference. The friends here have told us that they don’t offer studies to everyone who appears to be interested; otherwise they would have 20 studies or more each and would have no time for door to door work (in spite of this, many of the pioneers have 10 to 15 studies. Sumitaka and Akiko have 11 together, and they are trying to get more, since they are in the low end. To their credit, they don’t speak Spanish very well yet, but they are progressing nicely. They are teaching me Japanese words little by little. One that I use often with Sumitaka is “Kiótsketé!” which means “Careful!”). Instead, they gauge the interest in their return visits, and observe to see whether the householder asks questions or gives any real input during the study. In the rural areas, we are told, the people are genuinely interested and will typically read the 4 or 5 magazines, brochures, and/or tracts that the friends leave with them by the time the next return visit comes around. It’s difficult to get to them more than once a month, I’m told, and even more difficult during the rainy season, because of the rivers. One man, however, walks about an hour and crosses three rivers to get to the meetings for the group in La Conquista, a small town very close to Santa Teresa. This is particularly amazing given the fact that he is about 65 years old and makes the trek by himself.

Now, the house that we rented, as you saw in the last post, looks like a charming little Barbie house from the outside. We have been really blessed by Jehovah because there is a bakery across the street that sells fresh bread and pastries, there is a hardware store next door to us (which is not that great because the owner is an evangelical who I ran into the first day here…he was talking about the Bible with another man, and was actually using a New World Translation with references, and in the conversation I overheard him say that all religions lead to God. Of course, my spirit was so roused within me that I had to use scriptures and Biblical examples on why this was not the case, and basically shut him up, and then later found out he was the owner of the place. He’s not hostile or anything, but rips me off any chance he gets. I’ve decided to stop shopping there and just take the 10 minute bus to Jinotepe and shop in the hardware stores there). There is also a pharmacy right around the corner and a restaurant next door as well. (The restaurant is pretty sleepy until the weekend, when they decide to turn it into a cool hangout and blast Los Bukis at an ear-piercing level. Thankfully at night it sometimes rains so hard you can barely hear yourself think, so it drowns it out nicely.) The cyber café is about 3 blocks from our house. The only thing, unfortunately, is that it’s far from the Kingdom Hall. But far in Santa Teresa terms is not far in American terms. It takes about 10 minutes walking to get there. Anyway, the house is great from the outside, but on the inside it was just horrible. The walls were a Pepto Bismol pink, and the kitchen was a horrid dark blue. The brothers helped us paint and we had to put about three coats of heavy oil-based paint because the lady before us decided to get the heaviest oil paint she could find in this disgusting color. So we finally got that done and Marlene made some nice curtains and screens for the mosquitos and it looks a bit more presentable.

Also, the neat thing is that the owner of the house is paying a very nice man who lives around the corner named Willy to take care of the house. This means basically watching it while we are not there and standing out in the street throughout the day in case we need anything. Some of you may think that this is a security risk and he will know when we aren’t home so he can break in or tell someone else to break in. My answer to this is simply that we really trust him. He is well known to the local witnesses here and the community in general. Plus, we also bought a new lock to the house.

Thankfully, the place was actually pretty clean because it hadn’t been lived in, really. Also, another blessing (and this is a HUGE one), is that we have AIR CONDITIONING in the bedroom! You have no idea how wonderful it is. It’s a unit that you usually hang in a window, but the lady that owns the house decided to just break a hole in the wall and so the back end is sticking out in the bathroom. Which actually is an added bonus because it gets so hot in there when the air conditioner is on that it feels like a sauna, so when you take a shower (which is always cold, of course), it actually feels refreshing and not “Oh Momma that’s Cold!”. Well, you do get the “Oh Momma it’s cold!” right when you step into the stream of cold water, and it actually makes you cry a little, but you get used to it and then it’s really refreshing.

So we finally have our things set up. Now for the reason for the title of this post. Blood and Ice. Blood, as in Marlene got her blood sprayed all over our bedroom, and ice because we finally got a fridge and we can have ice and cold drinks finally! Oh, wait. You don’t really care about the fridge? You want to know how Marlene lost a pint of blood? Okay, okay. I’m standing in the kitchen, painting it yellow. (Man, I hated that blue color! It was horrible!!!)

Oh wait, yeah. About Marlene. So I’m painting in the kitchen, and I hear her scream. I run into the dining room and she’s running in from the bedroom, and her hand is full of blood. I start freaking out, of course, thinking she’s going to die now and how in the world am I going to paint over the blood on the walls since now I’m out of white paint?

“What happened?!” I ask. She proceeds to explain to me that she picked up the fan in the room with the METAL BLADES and accidentally stuck her finger inside and the thing nearly chopped off her finger! (Thank goodness we got Tetanus shots in the US before we left!) I take a look and she’s got two really deep cuts and they are bleeding like crazy. I did NOT faint, I swear. But I did get a little queezy, you know, like when you want to throw up but you don’t? I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain. I suppose you can say it’s a mixture between light-headedness and nausea, but—Oh yeah, back to Marlene. So she’s a little bit panicked, too, and runs to get a towel to wrap around her finger. We put a little bit of an alcohol wipe on it, to clean it, and she starts cringing in pain. At this point, I swear I didn’t faint, either, but she did say something about me looking more in pain than she did. I ran across the street to the bakery to see if they had ice to put on it, but they didn’t. The owner’s wife, however, was very nice and took me across the street to a restaurant owner, made her open up the kitchen, and get me some ice. I took it back to Marlene, who by this time was sitting in the living room in one of the rocking chairs. I’m not sure if she thought she was going to die and was just peacefully awaiting the cold cold grasp of death while rocking in her chair, petting one of the dogs.

Anyway, her finger looks horrible and the next morning we went to the pharmacy to get some sterile gauze and some antibiotic ointment, and the owner seemed to be very knowledgeable and gave us an antiseptic rinse to clean the wound with. She did say, though, that Marlene should have gotten a couple of stitches.

Now, for the last part of this post. Today’s meeting (it was on Saturday this week because the elders have a meeting at Bethel tomorrow and so it was rescheduled) was pretty nice, and I was put to work! We had only 41 today because the other half decided to support the meeting at La Conquista, which is the group that we are taking care of, and of those 41, only three of us were brothers. So I read the Watchtower and did the sound. It was a nice lesson, which reminded us of the wonderful spiritual protection that we receive from Jehovah, but that we need to be able to preach fearlessly and efficiently. I think it’s even more important here to be well prepared for field service, because many people, I’ve noticed, can quote scriptures and even tell you where to find them in the Bible. But they still are being misled by Babylon the Great, have many questions and are very eager to learn.

On Tuesday, I have been invited to accompany a brother to visit a sister who lives out in the countryside (el campo), who cannot, for some reason, attend meetings. So the brothers visit her every once in a while to offer encouragement. I’m not sure exactly what her situation is, but I will post the experience afterwards. It is a pretty long way from here and we have to cross a river to get there, which should be quite interesting as there are no bridges or boats. Unfortunately, I won’t be taking the camera because I don’t want to get it wet. Akiko and another sister, Phoebe, just got back from preaching in an isolated territory and had to cross a river that was up to their shoulders by pulling themselves across it on a rope tied to two trees on either side (this river had been quite easy to cross on their way to the study, but it rained pretty heavily during the study and the river swelled to about 5 feet deep or so). I just hope I don’t have to deal with leaches, yuck! I do hope, however, that I get to see some howler monkeys, as they are pretty plentiful in the area.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

By the way, there were a bunch of pictures I was going to upload to this post, but it will have to wait til Wednesday since the internet is especially slow today because of the weather...

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