Livin’ Life In Nicaragua

This past month we were in Nicaragua. On an island. In the middle of Nicaragua is a huge lake, Lake Nicaragua, and in the middle of this lake is Omitepe Island.

It’s fairly small here, it’s a twenty minute walk to a store which only sells a few cokes and some snacks. All other things, we would have to take a ferry to go into the mainland. There’s also two volcanoes on the island, one of which erupted/did something noticeable only about two years ago and I’m also hoping that it does something cool while we’re here. Also we experienced an earthquake! The origin was in Costa Rica and it was a 7.6 but we felt the aftershock which was fun since I was in the bathroom at the moment. It wasn’t big, just suddenly the whole ground started swaying and I felt like I was in a boat. And the kids got all excited because they didn’t have to go to school.
 
This month, we’re living and working at CICRN, an orphanage that houses 19? children ages 4-20s (the ones over 18 go to university but the director Helen still has rooms for them and considers them her children until they can find a place on their own). We’re helping CICRN with work around their grounds, destroying this huge palm frond roof pavilion that was starting to decay and now we’re rebuilding it but using metal and making it into a tin roof.

The head constructor, Heladio, is a beast and knows how to do all the cool things like weld and is also the official butcher for CICRN because it’s also a farm with these Nicaraguan goat/sheep hybrids and chickens. Heladio laughed when I asked if I could weld but I’m still working on him. Ah well. Some days a week we work construction and other days we work in the garden. Oh yes, mom, I got your attention didn’t I? Yup. Guess who’s a pro at weeding?

This kid. They grow vegetables year round and basically all the fruits and vegetables that we eat are grown on the grounds.

The other day, we were given a plot of unmanaged land and cleaned it out, tilled the land, and created nice little happy mounds to plant watermelons.

And what do we eat here along with the vegetables?

 
Rice and beans. Everyday. Every meal.
  

It’s a crazy lifestyle as we sweat and fend for our lives against insects of every kind, but this month as led to lots of laughter, loving on sweet children, and learning more and more about the power of God.