Last Monday, we left Toronto on our journey down to Nicaragua. It was a very long and tiring day. The food has been great and the people are very nice.
On Saturday, we went to the beach. The waves were crazy just like last year but in the end, it was lots of fun. There were the same kids on the beach that were selling shell necklaces from last year. We had lots of extra food left over. My mom divided the food into 5 food containers and gave one to each of the five kids. They greatly appreciated it. They ate all the food right away and said thanks. We asked the one boy if he remembered playing tic tac toe with us last year and he advised yes. However, he was more concerned with selling us more necklaces this year rather than reuniting with us .
Later Saturday afternoon we drove over to Leon. After supper, we went to the church service. Everyone there was happy and excited to see us just as much as we were happy and excited to see them. A bunch of the kids sang songs in front of the entire church during service. After service, my mom handed out candy to each of the kids. You can tell that they enjoyed that a lot. Right when she was handing out candy, we also started to hand out pictures that we took and printed off from last year. The ones who received these pictures were extremely excited to receive them. My mom did not even recognize one of the kids she really got to know last year. His name was Axel and even I didn’t recognize him. He was gotten taller, his hair was cut short and his face has changed too (my mom says he has lost his baby face). My mom was still looking for one more kid that wasn’t at service last night. His name was Josh. She had really connected with him too last year. Axel left early and came back approximately 20 minutes later with Josh. My mom eyes opened up and ran over to him and gave him a hug and also gave him a picture of them from last year. They both cried and hugged for a while. Each of them said they had a special place in their heart for each other. I thought that was nice. We headed back to the hotel when the majority of the kids left. Once we arrived at the hotel, we waited for 15 minutes for people to get ready to go to the Eskimo store to get ice cream. I really enjoyed that event .
This morning (Sunday), my dad woke me up so early (8:30) and I didn’t want to wake up. I finally decided to get up for breakfast and realized that everyone had already eaten before my mom, dad and me. We had to eat quickly so we could make it to the church service for 10am. Before we left the hotel we put together eight goodie bags for eight of the kids. Their names were Kate, Anielka, Reyna, Jefrey, Emanuel, Axel, Josh and the pastor’s granddaughter. My mom made me give two goodie bags to Anielka and the granddaughter.
Half way through church service they sent the kids upstairs for Sunday school. That was really cool because last year they didn’t do it because they didn’t have the second floor. I noticed that the crafts that they did and songs that they sang were ones that we used or did with them last year. Once when service ended all the kids headed down stairs. We gave each child some candy and a blow up ball. For the additional eight kids they received their goodie bags when others left. Inside the goodie bags there was toys for Emanuel and some school supplies for the other seven. When Emanuel opened his bag up there was a monkey flashlight. When you turn on the flashlight it makes monkey noises. He kept going around turning on the flashlight to hear the monkey noise. Our group started to blow up some of the balls and then played with the kids. Once that was done we started to head back to the hotel.
At the hotel we changed into cooler clothes, ate lunch and then ventured off to the market. I could not leave Leon without one last pit stop at the Eskimo store. We left Leon around 2:30 to head back to Masaya. We had supper and now everyone is watching the super bowl….. so I’ve gotta go to join them . See you in one week!!
Here are some pictures from the day (click any photo for a larger version):
