9:56a.m. – Jessica, Scott, and I stand staring at each other. Blinded by the absurdity of the situation. “Lord, help us get where we need to go,” Scott prays. Unsure of which way to go, we thought we had heard the ticket man comment when we passed kilometre 96. So we started to walk back the direction when came. Something inside of me said not to, though. I remembered the distance markers increasing yesterday as we drove back from El Soucey with Pastor Jaime. I didn’t remember this particular road but the direction favored the opposite to end us at kilometre 90.
10:00a.m. – “Scott, Jessica, I’ll need you to trust me on this one; let’s keep going the direction our bus was taking us.” We walk across the street toward the drought-ridden farm. Broken and fallen barbwire outlines the property. Withered straw and crops scatter the field scattered with malnourished dirt. I see a bus in the distance and stick my thumb out. It slows down enough for us to jump in the back entrance as it continues to move.
The bus looks like it’s been on MTV’s Pimp my Ride, which is their version of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, except for cars. The white bus has a chrome-plated grill guard, oversized exhaust pipe that looks like it belongs to a monster truck, and a ladder to access the top of the bus. We buy our tickets and ask the ticket man to drop us at kilometre 90. He tells us sure, and sends us to the front of the bus. We’re going in the right direction.
10:10a.m. – As we approach a fork in the road they slow the bus, and ask us off. It’s kilometre 92. This doesn’t make any sense. “Kilometre noventa es alli,” as the ticket man points down the opposite side of the fork we exit the bus and they go a different direction. Once again, stranded hoping to find a white truck we start to walk reluctantly. Wondering what else will happen this day.
10:12a.m. – HONK! HONK! A white truck drives up the same street the bus just drove down. It turns around and parks next to us. “Scott?,” the man asks. We look at each other, unsure if we should get in even though they know one of our names. A man who speaks nearly no English and a woman sit in the front seat. “Scott?,” as he asks again he turns and we see the logo on his shirt. It’s the same logo of the ministry we’re looking for. The Rainbow Network.
We jump in the truck and get to know Felix a little. He works full time for The Rainbow Network and does a lot of the microloan and school assistance for their offices in Dario. The woman is a friend of his. We wind through the relatively developed town. It has yellow, red, blue, orange, and purple houses mixed in with business and pharmacies. The streets aren’t noticeably named and a honking horn has replaced the use of their stop signs.
10:20a.m. – We finally get to their office, which has cast iron bars as doors and a Masterlock as their security system. It’s neighbor to a pharmacy and sits just behind a tree. We enter and meet Nelson who runs their operations in Nicaragua and David, one of the assistance. David and I will try to combine our broken Spanish and English together to make it through our meeting.
The intent of our meeting is to get to know their ministry better, discover their vision and heart, see if we would work well as partners, and meet any of their colleagues who go above and beyond the call of duty. As we start to discuss though, David says his English isn’t strong enough to help so he asks me to do all the translating and says he’ll help where he can.
“Lord, help make this work. You’ve broken down language barriers before; please do it again,” I pray in my head. As we start to talk, the Spanish comes easily
They have seven projects throughout Nicaragua, affecting 105 communities and 45,000 people. Their dream is to send children in the community off to college so they can return home and become community leaders to inspire future generations to go to pursue education. Sixty-five percent of the students who graduate from their programs go to college. Lack of education is a big problem in Nicaragua, though. Ninety-sever percent of their kids don’t have a sixth-grade level education. They offer tutoring, microloan programs, medical assistance, and community development initiatives to empower Nicaraguans to not fall victim to a poverty-creating system that has governed their country for so many years.
