First Days

Arrival:

Thank you for your prayers for our travel. After a somewhat eventful trip, and with all the culture shock we were experiencing, it was wonderful to be greeted here at the orphanage by the smiling familiar faces of Seth Howard, Caroline Byrd, Matthew Holcomb, and Jeff, Jon, Dan, and Jenny Lung. (Karen Washburne will be arriving tomorrow.)

Our plane arrived late in Managua and we had to leave the hotel to head for the next little airport by 4 AM. We got up in the night and took our cold showers and took off. A luggage rack fell off a curb in Managua and whacked Steve pretty hard in the head near a vein of some kind that spilled a significant amount of blood just as we were headed to the tiny plane at the national airport. Liesl turned green and very pale nearly fainting at that airport when we were checking in, (a combination of exhaustion, lack of sleep, hunger, the stress of the moment , being late for a flight, and Steve asking her to check his head and see if it had stopped bleeding yet.)Our little family of six and three other passengers made up the flight to Puerto Cabezas. It was a beautiful flight over jungle and mountains in a sky alight with God’s glory, though it did cross my mind that I might have had trouble getting on that plane if the thought of heaven was not so inviting as it is!  

Earl and Domarice

One of the dominant feelings I have had these first few days here in Puerto Cabezas is a deep appreciation and respect for Pastor Earl and his wife Damarice. I have had numerous flash backs to my time in Switzerland at L’Abri. Not at all because the physical surroundings bear any resemblance but the beauty of the community, the body at work, the loving and sharing and the community of people all pouring themselves out in behalf of others seeing Christ is reminiscent. It is deeply refreshing. Earl and Damarice exude a love for one another that provides a solid foundation upon which an entire needy community is upheld- It is of course God’s doing, and God’s holding together, but it is amazing how powerful an influence a loving couple committed to each other and to loving others together can be! I love it! So many needs are being attended to in this place on a daily basis and so many people have to help, and they are rising to the challenge. Pastor Earl has an uncanny ability to incorporate transient visitors (like Steve and I and others) that are only here briefly into this community. It is a priviledge to see what God is doing here. This couple has an amazing testimony of God’s grace in their own lives and they bring him greqt glory.

Feeding Center

One of the most poignant things we experienced these first few days was our visit to “help” (really mostly observe) the feeding center Pastor Earl started about a twenty minute truck ride away from here. Nicaragua is working very hard trying to overcome all the malnutrition that has plagued the children of this nation. They are making some headway. This feeding center is in an area where many “families” relied solely on the garbage dumps as their source of food. The dump is still full of people scrounging. But there are now more than 400 kids, and a bunch of mothers that get one very nutritious meal a day. The center is run by leaders in the church here that are part of     the community at the orphanage. The couples that run it are SO LOVING and caring. And they are very concerned to share the gospel with the people they are feeding. One of Luke and Liesl’s close friends down here, Hosea, is paid by the church to come and spend time sharing the gospel with these children and their families almost every day. Only children are fed at the center, but mothers that come and help to clean up and wash pots etc. are paid in food to take home. Some of the children walk several miles each day to come and get this meal- barefoot and barely clothed in torn and tattered clothes that were probably our castoffs in Maryland or Virginia suburbs several wearers ago. It is an intensely emotional experience to go to this feeding center. The lives of the children there, their physical condition, the looks on their faces, their “housing” and the lack of adult input into their lives ( Many kids of four or five carry along baby siblings to feed- many two and three year olds show up with no one watching over them) makes the kids at the orphanage here seem like kings and queens by comparison. Kids here at the orphanage have SO MUCH MORE even though by our standards they have almost nothing) Workers here are few, but they are here and they are loving. Kids here get three very solid, if simple, meals a day. The kids at the feeding center were genuinely starving. They started out trying to give them forks or spoons when they opened the center, but gave it up because they are not used to using them and never have. You don’t need forks to eat what you scrounge from a dump. I could not look into some of their faces without crying. (not very helpful.) Your mind grows dizzy trying to think through your own life in the light of poverty and starvation and trying to imagine applications of When Helping Hurts.  Pray for these faithful loving Miskito Indians who know Christ and are feeding these children because of Him! May these little image bearers of God be nourished not only by the rice and beans, but by the manna from heaven!

 

Broken Parents Raising Whole Children

Steve and I will be doing a Broken Parents Raising Whole Children conference starting Monday morning. We deeply covet your prayers for this time. We are intensely aware of the need for prayer, feeling very small and inadequate, and minimally informed about the specific strengths, needs, problems, and concerns in this culture in the area of parenting, and unable to speak any of the languages. We are blind. We can only trust that the incredible good news of how God’s love applies, and the eternal grand wisdom of his word will transcend culture and speak deeply to human needs we all share, and to some human needs that we don’t even comprehend ourselves. The conference will be for four days: Monday (July 8) through Thursday (July 11) from 8 AM through 12 Noon each day with a little break and snack between two sessions each day. Pastor Earl has invited all the staff and workers at the orphanage and the school, the older university students still staying at the orphanage, the members of the church, Government workers in the community, and members of two other churches. He anticipates about 120 people. Please, please, pray like crazy for God to use his word to make a real difference in lives and to bring home the wonder and power of the cross in practical ways.

Language

Steve and I find ourselves desperate to share more deeply - praying for the power shown at Pentecost undoing the tower of Babel! I have never wished so earnestly for the gift of tongues! Luke and Liesl have been very patient and kind taking the time to be translators for us so that we can interact. But we feel badly to take them away from the more significant conversations they would be having with their already established relationships.  It has been wonderful to meet all the people that Luke and Liesl love so dearly and who obviously love them too! There is a beauty in relationships that makes one long for heaven!

And Speaking of Some of these Relationships:

Thank you for praying for God to provide a way for Luke to visit Raphael. Thank God, Luke has been able to arrange for a way to go see Raphael for three days. Luke came with a supply of really good Christian Life Books, with medicines, vitamins, and some practical toiletry type items to just give him a  lift in getting back onto his feet. Luke is hoping for deep fruitful conversations for all three days and lots of time spent praying with Raphael, but he also hopes to lend a little hand looking for work possibilities. Please pray for God to hold this young man securely in his hand and let no one pluck him out of it! Also pray for Luke’s safety traipsing about Nicaragua, something not recommended.

Liesl has already had a great time talking with Flor as she has been off from university classes since we arrived. She is staying here helping out at the orphanage while on break from school. She seems to have continued in her faith even if a bit wobbly. It has been beautiful to meet her and her little sisters who are also here at the orphanage. May  God complete the good work he has begun!

God is so good, and the people he has created in His image so profoundly beautiful, even in our fallen-ness, Pray for Him to shine through our words, (well for some of us) our smiles, and our hands.