Greetings from Nicaragua!  What a wonderful experience this has been in Masaya Nicaragua.  It is a blessing to be able to help the church here.  It has been great getting to know the Nicaragua workers whom we are helping build the 2^nd story of their church.  These men don’t know where their next meal is coming from yet embrace us foreigners with great hospitality and love. Despite the language barrier we are all having a great time and through some help from Elsy our translator we have been able to get to know them at a deeper level and hear their stories.  It is very interesting to see how these men have come to Jesus.

One thing the team has had to endure is how construction methods work in Nicaragua.  Often times the way we think is the easiest way of doing something is not the way it is done here.  Yesterday we had to move a large pile of gravel to another location so we could dig a 4ft deep hole to pour concrete reinforcements for the 2^nd and 3^rd stories of the church. In Canada, we would have originally dumped the gravel in another location not over the said location of the needed hole, but not here.

To move the gravel we used a wheelbarrow which would have been to the dump 10 years ago in Canada.  The progress was slow.  There were two older wheelbarrows also there, but one didn’t have a wheel and the other didn’t have a top.  The team had a great idea to get a local machinist to weld the wheel from the 1 wheelbarrow to the other to get 1 useable wheelbarrow.  Tim also asked the local machinist man if he could drill out some holes in the concrete which he said he could do.  We also got a local carpenter to fix a table and a guitar shop to help fix an old guitar.  It felt good to help support the local area as well as helping the church family.  It seems the whole neighbourhood is aware of our presence.

After a hard day of working we then went to a MCC supported kids home which looks after abandoned kids with physical and mental disabilities.  Families here unfortunately don’t have the means to support kids with long term disabilities and abandon them on the streets.  This was the hardest part of the trip for me to see these kids.  As we walked into the room, kids ran at us and wanted to be held.  Many of us carried around a disabled Nicaraguan child for the duration of our visit.

This is my first Missions trip and what an experience.  Words cannot describe the experience we are all having down here.