We hopped into the tiny colorfully wooden boat with our day packs full of supplies for the next four days. We laughed nervously as each one of us tested our acrobatics leaping from the water of Lake Granada into the teeter-tottering boat that would drag us two hours away from El Puente. Which translates to “The Bridge” where we have settled for ministry in Nicaragua this month.
My team sputtered around Mombacho (The large volcano overlooking Granada) along with Ben’s team who we partnered with for our first of two visits to the Island. After some unsettling bumps and good conversations we finally arrived to our destination where the local kids greeted us with serious expressions. We unloaded our gear and settled in and were told to rest before waking early to work the next day.
The night was filled with restless sounds of Roosters testing their volume back and fourth beginning around 3 a.m. and deprived dogs viciously snapping and yelping as if they were fighting for their lives. The preacher and his wife graciously offered us their bedroom and porch to host all fourteen of us. We awoke early and were herded back onto Old Faithful and prayed over the motor that was having problems escorting us to our next destination. Once the motor puttered back to life the preacher and two local teenagers brought us to a sandbar at the mouth of a stream nearby.
We exited the boat and stomped through the shallow water to the sand where we filled sand bags and brought them back to Old Faithful. We did this until every bag was full, went back to the island, brought the bags up the muddy hill and dumped them in a pile next to the space where a church is in the process of being built. We repeated this process once more before slouching down for lunch.
Lunch consisted of the classic rice and beans cooked to perfection along with some mean looking fish with teeth that seemed to come to life and bite off our hungry little fingers. Despite my initial reaction of the butt-ugly fish, I sat hunched over looking like a dirty hitchhiker pulling off meat like a street cat discovering food for the first time.
To our delight the afternoon consisted of carrying cinderblocks from the lake up next to the pile of sand. I struggled to carry two cinderblocks at a time, the sharp edges were rubbing against my arms sending bits of rubble onto the ground as I hiked to the pile. At the same time locals were passing me carrying blocks stacked five high on a single shoulder while their children jogged up balancing cinderblocks on their necks. The kids would also place toads and crabs from the dirty shore inside the cinderblocks as a little surprise for the American Girls resulting in some hysterical screams and shouts lightening the mood for the rest of us.
The hard work left us filthy with sandy bodies caked in dirt and cement. We finished the day by walking slowly into the lake toward Mombacho like zombies ready to collapse and drown.
Our next visit to the island will be in a couple of weeks. For now we are back in the city rotating between five different ministries which include; playing and feeding local kids, feeding workers at the dump, and three different types of construction on the property owned by our ministry hosts. The idea is to build a school and rehab center for a very poor community outside of the city that is in need.
