We showed up to Bethel, the village outside of Chinandega, Nicaragua this evening. Not unlike the past few days we started playing with the kids and walking through the streets talking to families. The little girls hung on me and Ash as we walked around talking to families and enjoying our time working on our spanish. The boys played soccer in the middle of the village in a big open field surrounded by homes built by our contacts this month, Vision Nicaragua. The homes are made from tin and ply wood with concrete floors. They built homes for more than 100 families after a horrible hurricane wiped out their village 12 years ago.
Tonight as we loaded 18 of us "gringos" into the back of the truck to head home, Daren said there is a young man, Ernesto, who is 29 and is dying of chronic kidney failure. He asked if we would like to pray for him…
We drove down the dirt road as the sun had just set, and pulled up to a tiny home. Next to the home many people were gathered around a hammock. We walked quietly toward them as Daren(our host this month) introduced us to Ernesto, who was lying very still in the hammock surrounded by many family members all touching him and comforting him in some way.
They talked to Daren in spanish just as he was family, because in this village he is family. Daren introduced us to Lelisa, Ernesto's beautiful little 3 year old who stood there in all pink smiling up at us. He then told us more about Ernesto. He has been working in the sugar cane fields for the past 5 years. While working there he ingests a pesticide. It is one of the best and cheapest ways to grow sugar cane, promoting growth and killing pests but, it is a death sentence to the field workers. It was outlawed in the states in the 60's but is still the most common herbicide in Nicaragua. I am crying as I write this because I can't imagine the desperation Ernesto must have felt at one point to provide for his family so much that he would take a job that would by most odds take his life, like it had so many men in his family. He along with thousands of Nicaraguans have, and have lost theirs because of their need to put food on the table. So tonight I ask that you pray, Ernesto has less than one month in his doctors opinion to live.
Tonight it about the one… the one family. Pray for his wife, that isn't much older than me; pray for his daughter who isn't old enough to understand what losing her father means, and pray for Ernesto as his body is in so much pain.
Looking into a little girls eyes tonight and thinking that her father could die by the time we leave this country is devastating.
Lord we need You.
