It is hard to believe that it is already the 3rd month of my race! This month we are in Nicaragua right outside of Chinendega. We have been working in a village of about 150 families called Bethel. We have been playing soccer with the kids, visiting families, and we have gone to a couple of graduations. We have started to build a house for a woman who works here. The house will be 16ft by 22ft. We are also putting a roof on a different house for another woman who works at our ministry site.
It has been a lot of fun getting to know the locals and being able to interact with them. The other day we were painting the soccer goals for the soccer tournament we held today. We were unable to find anywhere to wash out our paintbrushes so we were just wondering around the village when we ran into one of the nighttime security guards here on the ministry grounds. We asked him where there was some water to wash out our brushes and he dropped what he was doing and took us to his house.
The paint we used to paint the goal was oil based paint which I am unaccustomed to. It turns out that when you get oil based paint on your hands it is almost impossible to get off with water. So we were trying to get the paint off our hands and our friend was cleaning the brushes for us with paint thinner. We ended up getting paint all over his stone sink which he uses to wash clothes and dishes. When we tried to wash it with water it just spread it around to no avail. We felt horrible, we offered to get more paint thinner to clean it but he assured us that his wife would do it later (a comment that had us all laughing). The Nicaraguan people are so generous with everything they have. If you need something they are willing to do whatever they can to help you.
For the next week or so we will be building a new house for one of the cooks here and putting a new roof on another one of the cooks house. The budget for the new house is around $900. It's crazy how my perspectives have already started to shift as I have been in these three countries. Now, any house with a concrete floor and a toilet instead of a dirt floor and a squatty pottie is a "really nice house". The roof is for one of the cooks who has two sons and a daughter livening in a 4 room concrete house. During the rainy season the roof would leak all over, one of her sons said "it was like it was raining inside."
As we pulled the tin roof off there were holes in it and it was rusted through in places. Some of the rafters were literally tree limbs. Some of the rafters were completely rotted through. When we replace the rafters we will be be using steel and new tin for the roof. We will be raising to foot about 4 feet in the back to hopefully make the house a little cooler. We are in the "most comfortable" season here and it's in the 90s everyday.
I've really enjoyed this month so far because it's nice to be able to start something and pour yourself into it and at the end of the day be able to look at it and see what you've accomplished. Whether that's pulling a roof off a house or cleaning a community for a soccer tournament. I like the idea of leaving the people here with a tangible example of Gods love for them.
