Nicaragua recap

Hey ngco faithful!  It’s Jacob again, and I’m back with some more Nicaragua recap.  If you recall my last entry, I wrote about La Chureca and gave you some of my history with Nicaragua.

You’ll remember that my adventure in La Chureca took place on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 26).  Little did you know that I was already a week into my trip by then!  That’s right, my father graciously offered to take a day off work to chauffeur me to Chicago on Nov. 19.  Your very sleep deprived author humbly accepted this offer – especially since we had to leave at 4:30 am!  Actually, let’s step a little further back to when this story actually begins.  About 2000 years ago, the Son of God was born.  He was fully God and fully man.  Why did God send him to Earth?  As Paul so eloquently states in a letter to Timothy, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life."  So that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  I am happy to freely receive that which was freely given to me.  Now I can focus the rest of my existence on important things like getting a good education, getting a good salary, getting a good circle of Christian friends, getting a good Christian wife, and getting a good home in a pleasant neighborhood.  That way I can insulate myself from a world that is poor, that is gay, that is in bondage, that doesn’t believe in God, and that is hostile toward my faith.  And that would probably be true, except for Christ’s Great Commission which he gave after being resurrected from a crucifixion.  To paraphrase His words from Matthew 28:16-20, "Go."  More specifically, "Go and make disciples of all nations".  Fast forward 2000 years.  About a week before I set out on my adventure to Nicaragua, I was asked "Why do you keep going to the same place in Nicaragua?  Christ said to go and make disciples of ALL nations."  After overcoming the first wave of shock from the question, and right before I started to say "How dare you…", I thought to myself "That is a fair and valid question."  I’m not sure what answer I gave, but it got me thinking.  Why do I keep going back there?  For one, I have made a lot of friends with the orphans and staff and love spending time with them.  But more compelling is what the Lord has laid on my heart.  It doesn’t feel like my part is done there.  It is still way too easy for me to identify where He is working, especially in how He has convicted me to give the kids something semi-consistent in their lives.  Maybe "something" is the wrong term.  Perhaps "someone" is a better word to use.  Maybe this means that my role in Nicaragua will never be over.  I don’t know.  Maybe that will change.  (Side note: this section took several revisions.  The previous versions were much more "preachy" than this.  It probably still comes across as "preachy", but I want the audience to know I don’t claim entitlement through my faith.  I’m not particularly special – in fact, I’m just as dumb as you are – but my encouragement would be to not let that stop God from working through you.)

Back to my adventure.  I finally got into Managua around midnight after connecting through Houston.  Javier, the director of the orphanage, picked me up and we made the drive to Brazos de Amor.  I finally got into bed at about 1 am to conclude an extremely long day of travel.  Fortunately I got to sleep in until 5:30 am.  I said hello to all the children and rode along with them to their last day of school.  After Javier and I dropped them off, we headed back to the orphanage for a bit.  This is where I met another guy visiting the orphanage named Juan.  He grew up at a different orphanage in Nicaragua as a child until he ran into some severe medical problems.  He had his right arm amputated at the shoulder and was hospitalized for about 6 months.  He survived the medical problems and surgeries and was eventually adopted by a family in Canada at the age of 13.  Another side note is that it is EXTREMELY rare for a Nicaraguan to be adopted.  It is a very long and very expensive process, and their culture also believes that gringos (white people) will use the children so that we may harvest their organs.  So Juan spent the next 10 years growing up in Canada.  He just graduated from a Bible college in Canada and is back spending about three months in Nicaragua.  Needless to say, I was shocked to encounter a one-armed, bilingual, Nicaraguan-Canadian that said "Hey, is it tuque-wearing weather in Iowa yet, eh?"  Juan became evidence of God’s infinite provision.  God says, "Alright, what do you need?  Communication?  Let me introduce you to Juan."  Shortly after meeting Juan, we headed back to the school to watch the kids perform their final exams.  Kids from the age of 10 or 12 through 17 year olds all had the same teacher and thus all had the same exam.  The school kids consisted of children from Brazos de Amor plus many others who all had families.  The exam was oral and consisted of speaking in English in front of their peers and the parents that came to watch.  Every kid made a poster entitled "Important People in My Life" accompanied by photos of these important people.  They would go through each person on their poster and remark about who the person was, what color hair they had, what color eyes they had, and what they liked to do.  This became far less interesting to me after about the 50th time of hearing the exact same spiel.  I decided to walk out of the schoolhouse and get some air or take a siesta.  The siesta became out of the question when I got mobbed by young kids, since I was obviously the only gringo around.  You ever get the feeling that everyone is staring at you?  Well in this case it was true.  Kids swarmed me and wanted me to sign their notebooks and clothes like I was a celebrity.  Finally, after receiving a quick glare from the teacher, I realized I was causing quite the disturbance since the students being examined couldn’t speak over the chaos I was creating.  The next thing that happened made me want to collapse in a pile of tears.

One of the girls from Brazos de Amor, Valeska, showed me the poster she had made.  Valeska is 14 years old.  If you ask Valeska who her father is, she will tell you she doesn’t have one.  She says the guy that got her mom pregnant took off.  She has never known him.  To compound the devastation, Valeska is an orphan because her mother simply doesn’t want her.  Valeska has siblings still living with her mother, but for whatever reason she doesn’t want Valeska.  So she shows me the poster that she has made and under the title of "Important People in My Life" is a picture of me that I had given to her on a previous trip.  This sent me reeling!  I was shocked, searching for answers to questions like "What am I doing on there?  She couldn’t have known that I was going to be here for her exam!"  While I was attempting to process this and refrain from an ugly-cry which would cause yet another disruption, I wrote down three questions.  1. Am I really that important to her?  2. Does she just not have photos of the important people in her life?  or 3. Does she simply not have anyone important in her life?  My heart broke, but I was able to keep my composure.  My heart breaks again just writing about this.  Why was I on there?  Probably comes from a combination of those three questions.  I also wrote in the journal that I was keeping that this is the moment I felt God tell me that my labor was not in vain ("Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." 1 Cor 15:58).  This is what its all about: not necessarily investing money, but investing time, passion, commitment, and love to those that have never been exposed to any of these.  I have video documentation of her poster and her presentation, but I won’t have that available for another month – which is a long story for another day.

That was Friday.  Saturday consisted of taking the young children out for a fun day.  We wanted to go into Managua, but that particular day happened to be a dangerous and volatile time to be in Managua due to political strife.  The ruling Sandinista party was attempting to rewrite the constitution so that Daniel Ortega can remain in power and run for "election" in 2011.  Needless to say, we decided to stay in Jinotepe that day.  We took the little ones to a place that operated a bunch of those 20 year old rides that are usually outside of K-Mart.  Its generally some little car that moves back and forth.  They had the best time!  After that we got pizza for lunch, went to the park, and got ice cream.  Everything was fun save for the unnerving sound of random gunfire while at the park.

Sunday was the day for church.  Javier and I took the kids to church at around 9:30 am.  Regular church wasn’t until about 2:30 pm.  After dropping the kids off, Javier and I ran some errands around Jinotepe.  This was really fun for me.  We wanted to find a place to tune-up the van, but almost everything is closed on Sunday.  We settled for a car wash.  When I say car wash, of course I mean two Nicaraguans, a giant barrel of water, and two rags.  The car wash took about an hour and a half.  While we waited, Javier and I walked into town and spoke about the political climate of Nicaragua.  It was fun for me to be part of the scene in Jinotepe while practicing my Spanish conversational skills.  We picked the kids up from church and returned in the afternoon with the older kids for regular church.  Church was a long story that makes me exhausted just thinking about it.  It lasted about 4.5 hours and we probably sang for 3 hours.  No one else seemed to notice that it was about 140 degrees.  It was totally worth the sweat because following the service I actually recognized someone in the congregation.  Her name was Diana Teresa.  Diana Teresa left Brazos de Amor around September when one of her family members came to get her from the orphanage.  I think she is 15 years old.  I really connected with this girl during my previous two trips and was saddened when I heard she wouldn’t be around.  What a blessing it was to see her again!  It was obvious that Diana never fit in with the girls at Brazos de Amor, which can be especially hard on a young lady at an age where fitting in is most important.  I decided to seize the opportunity to hug her, let her know that I missed her, that I think about her all the time, and that I have been praying for her.  When we got back to the orphanage I went to the little kids’ home (Brazos de Amor consists of a house for the little boys and girls, a house for the older girls, and a house for the older boys as well as visiting teams).  The little ones were doing their nightly devotionals which consisted of Sunday school songs followed by prayer time.  Each child had a turn to pray out loud.  Every little orphan prayed for me.  If you ever need to be uplifted, have a child pray for you.  It was a first experience for me, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone.

Monday was the day that a team of about 10 arrived from St. Louis.  I sort of got adopted into their team.  I brought my guitar on the trip, so I became their impromptu worship leader at the end of every night.  Tuesday was the day that we worked on refinishing the tables and chairs in the big dining room.  Wednesday was the day that we all went to Heartylandia, a water park in Jinotepe.  And what is a Nicaraguan water park like, you ask?  It was a lot of fun!  It was pretty clean by Nicaraguan standards.  It was a large pool with some slides that weren’t in operation.  Heartylandia also had a go cart track and everyone got in on the action.  Again, I have video of this but it isn’t available at this time.  Thursday was La Chureca in Managua which I have already written about.  After La Chureca, we went to a gigantic market called Huembes (pronounced "whim-baze").  All the gringos got $5 to buy a weeks worth of food to feed a family of four.  I purchased the basics like rice, beans, cooking oil, salt, and sugar.  The team would use this food at a food outreach on Friday, but I would be gone by then.  The markets in Nicaragua are so much fun.  They are filled with a wide array of different shops, people, and beggars.  I decided it would be fun to perform an experiment by trying to get a haircut.  I found a place and tried explaining what I wanted.  The lady did a great job and it took like 6 minutes and cost me $2 or $3.  Great success!

Friday, the next morning, I flew out of Managua.  I got to the airport at around 6:30 am, and it was already almost 90 degrees.  Managua is so stinking HOT!  All. The. Time.  It was a bit of a shock to arrive back in frozen Chicago in my flip flops.  There you have it folks.  I breezed through a lot of the week.  There is much I left out.  I could write and write and write about all the relationships I’ve established with the orphans and staff, but you have better things to do.  To close, I want to offer an encouragement and/or challenge by asking this:  How are you responding to Jesus’ "Go"?  I’m not trying to intimidate.  This is something I ask myself on a day to day basis.  Your response most certainly doesn’t require you to pull up stakes and visit some foreign land.  We have plenty of foreign nations in our own culture that don’t need careful religious ritual, but need costly love (I won’t take credit for that one; it comes from something I read in response to Romans 12.).  Again, I’m not sharing my experiences out of entitlement or to be viewed as a model-Christian (whatever that means).  I want to be very clear on this, and Psalms 146 does a nice job of conveying my message, "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing."  But how can God use you in His plan?  Before you start to say "I’m too old", "I’m too young", "I’m too poor", "I’m too important at work", or "I’m too married", spend a few moments praying about it.  Lastly, I’m headed back to Nicaragua with my church over the upcoming spring break.  We always are looking for financial support or things that can be donated to Brazos de Amor.  Please email me at jacobnphipps@gmail.com if you feel convicted to contribute in any way.  If you made it all the way through, thanks for taking the time to read!  Until my next Nica-adventure,

Dios te Bendiga y Feliz Navidad!