Bethel suddenly pointed us in a new direction!!

Hi all followers of our blog around the world :)

We have suddenly been reassigned by the Bethel in a surprise move ... another direction completely.  "The scene of the world is changing" and we have now been asked & assigned to serve in another country instead!!!

Our choices given were Panama City or Costa Rica... and we decided to go to Costa Rica.

We spent this week handing over our Bible studies to local brothers who will take over and continue to teach them. 
We are currently packing our bags and we will leave 5 o'clock tomorrow morning to serve in another place where the need is great.

We are going to a small place in the southern parts of Costa Rica. But it's much bigger than Totogalpa though ... around 40000 inhabitants instead of a couple of thousands like here.... AND to my utter delight they might even have some public WIFI spots in a few places there too.... so back to civilization again we hope LOL !!!

However we have VERY divided feelings about the whole thing... we are really excited to go to a new place.... but we are also very sad to leave all new people we met behind.... Especially Las Cruces and Salamasi where we now are somewhat of local celebrities.... its not often foreigners like us set their fot in places like that.  Many there now know us by name and love to run up and talk to us every time we show up :)

We will close this blog and open another blog instead, one that is dedicated to Costa Rica.... After all, it's kind of silly to have a blog named Nicaragua when we will be living and serving in a completely different country.

To follow us from now onwards please go to our new blog instead using the link below....

http://vamoscostarica2014.blogspot.com

Why is it goodbye? ?

So why is it goodbye to all these nice people then?
Official change of direction very shortly... stay put for major update on this blog any day now ;)

A snap of most of us.

A snap of most of us in the congregation last Sunday.

We just had to laugh at it.

Going home to Totogalpa from Ocotal today. It was VERY heavy rain and we stood at the taxi rank waiting for aaaages and we actually thought we missed the last one.
Then suddenly at the last minute one shows up. ... completely full.

But "full" in Europe is not the same as "full" in Nicaragua so we both squeezed up in the front-seat and we are thus now 7 in a car that seems made for 3.5 people only.
As well... It's a TINY (leathal) extremely old car... a wreck. .. a Kia that seems 40 years old.
Nothing works inside or outside except for the radio that was on full blast.... could not help laughing at the whole thing and had to take a snap of us laughing away in the front-seat.... very dark outside at the time so only our teeth are visible here ;)

Once home in Totogalpa Mily went to her favourite banana-selling-guy in town since we had not eaten anything all day.

Today's cleaning

Some snaps from today's cleaning in the Kingdom Hall

Lots of sisters

Lots of sisters out in the ministry today. Here are a few of them analysing what needs doing around the territory.

Typical day in this place

Typical house in a typical area where we preach, seen from the outside.

Inside the house; after our bible study.... The neighbours stormed the house to join in viewing the www.jw.org videos we downloaded to Mily's tab.

Guess it's "this week's cinema experience" for them since many don't own a TV.

Another plunge

Another plunge into the deep water, I'm taking another 10 minute item in the service meeting today :-0

Thankfully Mily is good on the Spanish grammar so it's teamwork all way.

Mily will have her first demonstration as well in Spanish. 

Met a slightly crazy lad

Met a slightly crazy guy in the ministry today: and I just had to ask him to pose for a photo.
He is a bullfighter and had his top arm muscle ripped off by a bull 2 months ago.
It's still healing and he is fortunate to still have movement.

When I asked him if he will do it again he looked at ME as if I was the crazy one and said..... "si por supuesto" (yes of course)

Time to pay the bills

Bill payment today... both electric and water but it's SOOO complicated we had to go to the office for clarification.

The first thing that hit me here is how do they do CTRL + F ????

Note,  no computers on the desk. ... all office work here is done "old style".  Using papers, pens, stamps etc.... the 21st century is not here yet ;)

Just to post something today

We been in ministry all day, so had no time for photos... here are various old iPhone photos from all over the place just to post something.

Mixed bag from today's ministry

Today's ministry was one of those very far away territories again; just over one hours walk. However good news... halfway there the car below showed up and picked up the walkers :)

The bicycle guys continued as per usual and it was very sweaty and tiring.

The territory itself was very strange,  nobody talked here??!! Even when asked extremely basic questions ... or yes and no answers... they just did not interact with us.

After speaking to a local guy in Totogalpa later in the evening we found out its a very tight knit comunity and they are very suspicious of strangers.
But as always there is an exception to the rule ... and we met a very old lady who helped out with guidance and was pleased to receive the message.

Overall it was another fun day out again. 

PS: Note the air conditioning in the saddle below. .. I leave it up to you to imagine which way the wind goes ;) LOL

Don't know about you guys

Don't know about you guys back in Europe.... but this video tool we use worldwide is just "the bee's knees" here in Nicaragua it really strikes both hearts and minds.... like a hot knife cuts through butter.
Everywhere we go it's all positive feedback, and I mean VERY positive.

It's not reality

When reading/listening to news in Europe it's "not reality" in a sense that we never get emotionally involved or we simply fail to grasp its real people who are involved.

This struck me here today in the ministry.
They are working SO hard in the fields and its a constant manual uphill struggle in the blasting heat. Especially nowadayd with the "El Nino" effect as they call it here (global warming).

Walking past the fields we meet people who work hard all day ... every day... and its just producing scorched yellow fields!!!!!

When speaking to them it stabs my heart to understand their daily struggle.
Whatever little they manage to get growing is hardly nothing and it's also very bad quality, not good enough to sell, and not adequate to feed the family.

They are literally living on the breadline and can't afford even the basics. .. and the last couple of years made it even WORSE for them.
How bad can it get?

If nothing changes there will be no people left in the country side here in 10-20 years time.
This will create a chain reaction and people in the cities will also get less to eat since none is left producing the food they need :(

They cannot afford to import food in this country,  they are already struggling with current prices

Great success

Quite a few of the kids can't read ... so the videos are a great tool and real success here.

Today's snaps

A couple of today's snaps.

1
Wild cotton we came across in the ministry this morning. I have never seen a commercial field here though.

2
Local baby transport, a crate on a bicycle

The Great Crowd

The great crowd out this morning in Salamasi for the global jw.org tract campaign.

Don't know

Don't know what is happening here but it looked funny so I had to snap a photo with my phone. 

Can this lion be tamed?

A photo of my bible study taken during the war, the guy on the right.

Question...
Can this lion be tamed by God's word?

Jokes aside... he is actually quite a nice guy (nowadays at least).
I never asked him what he got in his baggage from the war though; I feel it's not for me to enquire about that.... until he opens up that can of worms himself.

Deep end of the water

Im certainly thrown into the deep water in this congregation.  Again they gave me a 10 minute assignment for bible highlights and we have only been here 3.5 months. .. we are not even half way learning the language and it's an uphill struggle.  But with the help of my wife's translation skills and a top up by holy spirit it will probably work out ;)

Below is a snap I took with my phone on the way to a bible study of mine in Totogalpa. Passed these kids with their doll and thought it looked kind of funny so snapped a shot. 

Almost good news

I managed to get my old samsung phone up and running with blogger! !!

However it is HUGE  so I can not use it openly .... people will spot me and think it's very expensive and simply rob me (and they are right because with Nicaraguan standards it is very expensive).  
To make matters worse resolution is lousy on this phone as well.

Today we had return-visits in Las Cruces for a couple of Mily's studies.
On the way we met a number of kids who are very familiar with us being there now  (as most people are).
Some of the kids are very shy hiding behind trees looking at us... but some are running up to us to try to speak to us about anything they can think of.

Below is a photo as we showed some kids-videos we downloaded from the www.jw.org website.
They could not keep their eyes of the tab and wanted to see them over and over :)

The girl sitting next to Mily is the one who is so attached to her.
She saw us from a large distance on a hill and she RUN for her life all the way down a steep mountain to meet us & hug Mily. 

They seem to be very excited with this "strange looking black and white couple" that arrived in their village from another part of the world.... we are the Martians that landed on earth LOL ;)

Text update for Sunday

Sorry no more photos because my iPhone is dead :(

I can only post text updates now ... and this is what we were up to Sunday. 

We went to Las Cruces again to do some bible studies.
In between we did some open witnessing in the community and one guy came up to us and asked if we could come to his house next week and discuss the bible as well. .... how often does that happen in Europe?   ;)

We also tried to speak to a few youngsters (around 8 years or so) but since it was Sunday the whole area looked like a battle field with drunks lying in the streets and running all around doing stupid stuff.
The kids did not like it though so they wanted to relocate next to the baseball field instead. Once there we looked into some brochures and kids videos and they loved it! !!
One of the girls (we met them many times before) loves Mily so much she just can't stay away from her.

On the way home I came across another man in Totogalpa I have not seen for a while. And he ALSO asked me to start a bible study with him.

No more photo-posts?

Disaster has struck, my iPhone is now stone dead.

I don't know if/where/when/how and if ever this phone will be fixed..... and until that is done we are unable to put any more photo-updates on this blog.

We might be able to update it with text only..... but even that is not sure.

Sorry all for the inconvenience, but there is nothing we can do about it at present :(

M & M






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Rurals

Today we went rural outside Granada. Around a 30min drive in a jeep on a bad road following the lake-side northwards..... and there we joined the missionaries in some bible studies. 

It's been a great time with them... they taught us more in a week than we learnt from Nicaraguans in 3 months. I guess it's because Nicaraguans are so used living here that they don't question or see what is around them and just perceive it as normal.
But the missionaries see this country from a global perspective; so they gave us a lot of insight practically, socially and spiritually.

Not easy here for the locals

News

It's currently tough here for the locals :(

Link

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Granada house to house work

The other day we preached with a couple of Mily's friends who live in Granada nowadays. They have been serving as missionaries for decades and are spiritually rock solid :)

This is a snap of a man we met in the house to house work today. 

After the ministry and before the meeting we had some "juice of the day". 

Today's taste was watermelon :)

A local Kingdom Hall (in Granada) before today's meeting.