Home Sweet Home.

Well I am in the states for the holidays. As most of yall know by now I surprised my mom and came home for Thanksgiving lunch without her knowing. I was hoping to get a picture of this but was unable to. Needless to say she was over joyed that I did not miss Thanksgiving.

The overall time spent in Nicaragua was really good and i realized that i learned more than i ever thought i did. From the beginning of a new language, to blending into a new culture, to the Nicaraguan bus services.

I will be home through Christmas and going back in the end of December or first of January. I will try to remain somewhat updated with how things are going stateside.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

So this family came in from Boston for a month. And there were everything hippy short of marijuana and dreads but really cool people. They were on the leading edge of getting Green and getting off the oil dependency. He gave me this book I began to read called Hot,Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Freidman.

The lines out of this book are frightening. It speaks of how the stunning population growth is meeting the energy crisis. The answer we have had is to just use more oil and burn more coal which has slowly made the quality of water and air worse and worse. He claims at the rate things are happening, if we do not take drastic steps in the next 5 years we could enter a point of irresistibility of the living conditions of the world.

I know it sounds out landish and somewhat drastic but the cold numbers are very daughtning. Check it out. I am sure i will post some more about this book later....

only pictures....

A different World

So in the shadow of the country that seems to ring around the world, Nicaragua had their own election for mayor and other municipliaties. Honestly, I think it was just for mayor of Managua but so some reason the whole country voted... Nor real sure.

But there is a huge problem with corruption here. Somehow ancient cheating principles still fly here. The current gov't in charge FSLN reportedly worked the voting precincts in areas that were more heavily PLC, the rival party. There were several reports of the FSLN precinct workers opening the polls late and closing them early not giving PLC voters enough time to vote. Other corrupt stories include some precincts reporting 100% votes for FSLN and 0 votes for PLC.

You would think in the year 2008, with all the technology people would know that you can't steal 100% of the votes and get a way with it. They write this stuff down and its as simple as looking at the records. Anyway we are 4 days after the elections and at night the differing parties get in rock fights in the road and anywhere from 1-4 people have died from the fights and there is still not a real clear winner.

on the rocks

so i was supposed to go fishing this weekend for the second weekend in a row but it didn't work out again so me and julio and lester went a beach... We hung out and watched some little kids fish instead of getting to go out on a boat ourselves. Over to left there were a bunch of rocks that were sticking way out of the ocean. I wanted to get a picture of the waves hitting the rocks and spraying up so I walked over there and Julio followed as my bodyguard.

When I got over there I left my bookbag with Julio and climbed on top of the rocks with just my camera. On the ocean side the water was about 10' down below the rocks and waves were hitting it and I got a few good photos. As I was waiting for one more photo, a wave came that broke over the rocks and knocked me down but luckily i didn't fall off the rocks.

As I was standing back up I saw another wave, bigger that was coming. It was more like 3 or 4 feet over the rocks. I just laid down in defeat trying to hold on to the rocks to no avail. It knocked me off the rocks and i fell down on the backside about 10 feet. I landed somewhat on my feet but got several cuts and bruises including some horrible bruises on the bottom of my feet.

Needless to say I lost my camera and any awesome photos that I got from the photo shoot. This blogs picutres have been suspended until further notice.

The local Dump.

Nicaragua, specifically Mangua is known for their dumps. La Chureca is the local city dump that sits on lake front property of a beautiful lake. But due to poor care the floor of the lake is over half way covered in plastic bags. But this dump is home for anywhere from 1500-2000 people. You can google it and see pictures of people who spend their days fighting for first rights to pick through other people's trash for anything possibly salvageable including their food. It is very sad.

I don't take my trash to that dump but to one much closer and much smaller but the problems are the same. There are four boys that all but live there. Every time I drive up they are running to my truck barefoot and shirtless ready to pick through my trash. I always bring them whatever food I can get my hands on and unload my own trash to give them a break. I also try and spend a couple of minutes to just talk to them, to be someone who cares enough to know their name.

This last time, I made two runs on the way home the first time I was expressing to Julio how i wanted to share the Bible with them and help them on their walk of life. On my second trip i found a ratty old book in the dumb that was the new testament. I asked the boys if they knew what this was and then looked at me like i was crazy, it was a book duh. Then I realized these kids can't read, and they barely know how to write their own name. They are 9-13 years old and don't go to school and have no one that really forces them to do anything. I am trying to get these kids enrolled in school and teach them that without learning these things they will live at the dump the rest of their lives.

I made a deal with these kids. I would buy them a new pair of clothes, bookbag, shoes, and notebooks if they would go to school. I go to the dump every week and they would have to show me their homework to prove that they went to school. Pray that this will work for these kids and the Lord will show them somehow that they need to learn these things to survive in this world.

a long post coming

Sorry, after moving out of the orphanage my time on the internet has become more scarce, limiting the time I can post blogs. I promise to get better soon.

There have been many stories since I have moved into Julio’s house. Stories about his wife making his kid write the sentence “El Chele es Malo” The white man is bad, getting to read the bible with Julio, having his nieces just look at me and giggle while saying look a gringo along with many others. But this weekend was worth telling the whole story.

So me and Julio and his kid and 2 nieces and 1 nephew took the bus to a little down at the beach where his dad lives. We walked around the town where everyone wanted to at least shout at the gringo walking through town. There was a baseball game going on with people ages 15-50 playing in all different uniforms. We walked down to a little shanty on beach front property where his cousin lived. His cousin is a professional fisherman and invited me to go out with him next weekend. After that we went to a real Nicaraguan rodeo where you could do anything you wanted after you paid 30 cords ($1.50). That included hang out in the bull ring, ride a bull if you want, or grab a piece of red cloth to provoke the bull.

We left early to try and catch the last bus out of town for the night but we were 15 min late and were stuck in the town for the night. We went to the local carnival with some of Julio’s friends and rode a few rides and called it a night. Woke up at 4:30 AM to catch the first bus back to Los Cedros where we made it to work only 5 min late.

more post to come with better quality i promise.

My New House.

So this week I moved out of the orphanage and into a house with one of the guys I work with, Julio. I did this because I really feel more than to be in Nicaragua for the kids, the Lord sent me here to reach the everyday people. I also moved out because I wanted to learn more Spanish.

So now in a given day I wake up at 5 at Juilio's house and eat breakfast and get dressed and go to work at the orphanage with Julio. We work until 3 or 4 and then we go home to his wife and kid. She serves us bread and coffee and we just watch some TV or talk until dinner at whatever time we want when she gets it for us. Then we study spanish and he studies english until we go to bed.

But I hit a new culture shock with the relationship of him and his wife. I knew that Latin American women were very much domesticated and did most of the house work. But Julio does not lift a finger for anything. If he wants some coffee, she gets it for him. It is hard to even have that conversation because it is clear that this is all he has ever known.

More stories from the house of Julio are sure to come.

Picture of the Orphanage.

My daily routine consists of waking up at 5 and walking straight to the kitchen for some coffee. I talk to the cook for a few minutes while i wait for the coffee to brew and then head back to my room to study some Spanish or read the word. As I was walking back to my room I saw this rainbow and took a few pictures. This is a picture overlooking the kitchen

Since the orphanage has 85 acres we have to have roads inside the orphanage to drive around with the tractor and what not... Due to the rainy season you really need four wheel drive to drive on the roads.... here is an example of the road honestly in decent condition due to the fact we didn't have that much rain the day i took this picture... Sometimes you can't see any mud inbetween the huge puddle... basically the road become the grand rio.... the big river of the property...

Hiking in Nicaragua.

Note: To keep this blog post interesting, there could be slight dramatization but it will be very slight and this is based on a true story and I have photos to prove it.

Today, I went hiking with Julio and Jamie, my two nica friends that i work with. I was out running some errands so i picked Julio up at his house at 145 as he looked as though he was still in the bed about 15 min before i got there. We drove back to my house and I got dressed before walking over to Jamie's.

The walk over to Jamie's is actually when the hike began. I live on 85 acres that is never mowed so the walk out the back of the property was like me and Julio playing Lewis and Clark across Nicaragua. When we got to the back of the property there is a river dividing Los Cedros and Monte Fresco. Since it had rained alot today there were no rocks to hop across on... you had to walk through and soak you boots and pants too (picture attached)

Once we waded through the river and lost 2 oxen and our entire supply of wheat we made it to Jamie's house. As usual, there were about 20+ people at his house and they were all family. I was introduced to everyone and maybe caught two or 3 of their names. The three of us took off for the summit with three of his family members following us.

After traversing the rigid slippery soil of Nicaragua and finishing the climb with an exhausting rock climb to the summit, we made it. We just hung out for a while and talked about our future plans of buying cows and which land would be most plentiful for them to eat on (not dramatized).

The second picture is the property of the orphanage. They own all property from the tower to the next tree line. The huge red building is the bodega, or shed for tools. This is my kinda place where the bodega is the biggest building on the property.

A taste of the culture.

So the culture here is slower and things that we find important are not labeled as important and time is not as important. This is true of all of the Latin American culture but i think Nicaragua is one of the worst.

Tuesday, Aldofo dropped the kids off for school a little early and they showed back up an hour later because school was canceled due to the rain. It is not like rain is a foreign concept here. They have only two seasons here, the rainy season and the dry season. Another employee on monday did not come to work. On tuesday, when I asked her about it, she said, it was raining all morning.

A Nicaraguan weekend

This weekend I was able to experience another side of Nicaragua as a typical Nicaraguan. On Sat. I was planning on trying to sleep past 6:30 before the sweat hit me. I had the fan on full blast and was laying in bed when i heard "Kevin, nesicitamos las llaves?" The two guys that work here needed the tractor keys about 7:30 because the guy we asked to come on wed. to get down about 60 trees showed up today.

Contrary to plans I put my boots on for a day of work. We cut down about 60 trees ranging from 20-60 feet into 6 foot sections and loaded them on a trailer all day in what seemed like the hottest day I have experienced. Once again I got outworked by the locals. The bottom post of the big trees weighed between 250-300 lbs and after lunch i was not able to pick them up unlike the Nicaraguans.

After work they invited me to watch the big fight, a nican vs. an american. I was super excited to get to to just hang out with all nicans for the first time. Julio came to the orphanage and I drove over to Jamie's house. Clearly they don't have cars but i was not going to walk 4 or 5 KM in the middle of a nican neighborhood at 11 or 12 at night after the fight.

Jamie lived in a two room house with dirt floors with two lights and two outlets. I think it is a life long proces to fix up your house because his parents lived in a very nice ceramic tiled floor house right next door. It is crazy to think that i have more invested in this laptop i am typing on then he does his house. They know everything that I have and even though i am a little ashamed to know that fact, but I pray that my wealth doesn't distance me from them.

I promise more pictures now that i can load them from my camera.

The simple beauty of google and technology

So today, living in this third world country, I found this amazing technology called Google. I am not sure if you know about it in America but apparently it does a lot.

It has this one feature that I used today. I had to do all the electrical wiring for a bathroom but had no clue how to do it so I just used the Google search option on my iPod touch. I was able to find a detailed diagram.

I then carried my iPod to the job site and carried out the diagram in real life. It was pretty amazing to see that all the wiring I did worked on the first try thanks to google. Check if out. www.google.com

Moving towards a goal

The older boys here are, for the most part, good kids but have little

direction or motivation to do things. In their free time, which this

past week was all day because they didn't have school, they either

wreak havok or sit around and through the ball.

Chris and I decided that we were going to plant a garden and teach the

boys a little bit about farming. We worked in the field all morning

explaining every step of what we were doing. When we were done, we

drank some pepsi and read the parable of the sower and talked about

it.

As cliche as that sounds, the boys really need to see a man that

reads and strives to live out the Bible. There is little masculine

influence at the orphanage compared to women. Coming from a culture

where women are not respected and your dad's mistress is practically

dinner conversation, the need for solid men is great.

An American-Nican weekend

This weekend was Independence day, so the city shut down on Monday. I lived it up big time this weekend--not like the Nican I have tried to become but just like a typical gringo for a change. Saturday, I went to the mall to just walk around and look at overpriced clothing and merchandise. You can live real cheap here, but our common luxuries are
ungodly expensive. For example. I clearly went to the hardware store in the mall and a 200 dollar drill was 449 and a 100 dollar saw was 239.

Sunday I didn't go to church because we have rotate and play guard on Sunday mornings. It consisted of me sitting around and practicing Spanish on the cook. Then at lunch we went to the beach to go surfing, and I tried my best at a very difficult sport standing up on 2 or 3 waves. Monday consisted of another surfing trip and the movies. Monday,
I successfully road a wave from the break to the shore. Enough rush to make me go again.

It was a refreshing weekend before entering the Nican workforce again.

Known similarities of Nicaragua and Mexico

Construction machinery consists of your two hands, no matter how deep

your holes are.

The Internet is horrible in the rain.

Meeting times are set with up to an hour of leeway.

Public transportation is slighty chaotic but great.

If you have white skin. Girls like you. Period.

Everything is made of concrete.

Living Among Your Mission Field

The Lord calls us to go and make disciples of the world.  We are all called to be reaching people with the love of Christ. I have learned to effectively show a person the love of Christ, you must at some level become like them. Some of the missionaries here live like a white collar worker.  In a world, where minimum wage is 65 dollars a
month, some of these missionaries stay in 350-500 dollar a month apartment complexes.   In a town where very few people have cars, some missionaries are driving 20,000 dollar cars...25 years of a minimum wage workers salary.

I would never say to be wealthy and have nice things is outright sinful but you must look at who you think the Lord is telling you to reach.  As my dream is being fulfilled, to work beside local poor Nicaraguans every day doing construction, their attitudes towards this lifestyle show.  They outright tell me that they don't respect some of
the people that work here because they show up and tell them what to do and leave.

I know that they are first and foremost here for the kids but i see the workers as a huge opportunity to begin to change the community. If you began to change workers into people that can change others, you began to improve the whole community.

Phillipans 2 says that our attitude should be like Jesus that even though he was God he humbled himself to become a man and was obedient to that... all the way to obedience of death on a cross.  I think that we need to chew on how Jesus didn't just tell us how to live but walked beside us and showed us how to live too.

How much does it rain

So they told me about rainy season and how it lasts all of September and part of October.  I thought I experienced a rainy season in Mexico when it rained like every other day for about 45 minutes.  Well, here it has rained for 12 straight days at least 3 times a day.

To give you perspective... Today it was raining, and I had, at most, a 15 foot run to the truck, and in those 15 feet, I fell in two puddles up to my calf that covered the bottom half of my body in water and the minimum of 5 gallons that fell on my head and soaked my t-shirt. After making the same run back into my house,  I had to change all my clothes to get dry.

Last night, a storm woke me up at 1AM and 4AM.  3 straight hours of serious down pour and when I went to look at my hole in the morning that I was almost finished with... it was more than 3/4 full of water and the force of all that water running down the hill knocked one wall

down.

After pulling out close to 75 buckets of water, we had another 50 buckets of dirt and broken block we had to pull out of the hole. Needless to say, work here is ridiculously slow and something ALWAYS goes wrong.

Cultural Changes

I went to this cultural integration seminar today and learned about the warm culture of Nicaragua and what it means to be here cross-culturally. Most of it I figured I already knew from the training in Mexico, but we did a portion on how you respond to changes, whether going to another country or to another college. It talked about how at first it is fun, and you love the new environment and what not. Then, after time sets in, you begin to fight the culture a little bit. Often you criticize the culture you are in or want it to be like the culture you were used to. This is followed by flight, where you seek another culture behind the culture you are in. You do this through doing things you used to do or trying to connect a lot to people you used to know. After you work through all your differences, you begin to fit into a new culture. It was interesting to see how that cycle happened to me differently in two different countries, and the amount of time it took me to find a place of fitting. I think whether you are living out on your own for the first time or going to college for the first time, it is not wrong to want to seek the old things you were used to but the amount you dive into them and live in them will prolong or shorten your time to find comfort in a new place.

Major Differences Between Mexico and Nica as of now.

-Mexico did not have a grocery store in the town. Nica has at least 5.

-For two months I did not watch TV in Mexico. Last night, I was able to watch the Clemson/Alabama game in English.

-Mexicans ate a very wide and tasty variety of food. Nicaraguans eat rice and beans with meat periodically.

-In Mexico, I thought we dug big holes. In Nica we dig bigger ones. ( See attached Pictures)

-In Mexico, I lived with 20 people my age. In Nica, I live with orphans 0-4,12-17 and women over 40.

Similarities to follow.

a different world

So I have traveled out of the country three times to do missions and found one re-occurring problem. The work Americans have just finished doesn't work anymore.  I think Jordan taught me this lesson when we were in Cancun because the church there before us had built a church but used a bad piece of wood as the main ridge beam for the roof.  Jordan asked the locals who

lived in the land how they would do it and that is how we built.

In Mexico we learned all about being a learner of the culture. One thing I learned is that Mexican culture is more Christian than America. When I got the truck stuck in Mexico I had two taxi drivers and a dump truck stop to help pull me out. In America, our schedules would hardly allow our friends to help us let alone strangers.

I think we have a lot to learn from the rest if the world.

I was wanting to post a blog about travels and all the stories aroundthat but failed to get around to it. But tonight I watch pursuit of happyness with the ten boys I live with. it was great for them to see a story about a dad who went through so much hell but held to his standards of raising a son. None of these guys have dads anymore but they got to see how people have those standards. It is cool to see adolfo, the house dad, and his mom jackie, the house mom, live there to give these ten boys parents when they don't have to. These are not your average good boys but adolfo and jackie give up their life to try and show these boys what a Christian family is supposed to be like.

State of the World Finances

Here, they are huge about the unreached people groups and cross cultural ministry. They talk about the 10/40 window where there are over a billion people who do not have access to a Bible or have any established church. Here are some stats from Joshua project about the Christian finances. I don't really know how to take it, but it is convicting.


16.4trillion. Income of Christians worldwide
370 billion. Amount Christians give to church (2.5%)
22 billion. Amount church gives to missions (6%)
22 million amount church gives to areas of the world that have no church or bible (1%) or 1 dollar for every $1737 goes to unreached people.

I say that in a calm spirit, but that is still pretty mind blowing...who says money is the answer to all the worlds problems.

tent making

History shows that most biblical missionaries had their own way of supporting their ministry. As it is always quoted, Paul made tents to support himself. Tonight, Jordan and I found our tent making. As you have heard, the rules prevent a lot of things...one being having a cell phone or using the base phone. Well, calls from here to the states cost 30 cents a minute-a rate Jordan and I can't afford. Today we bought a Mexican cell phone with a plan to call the states. It is only one dollar for 20 minutes. How are we making tents you ask? Phones are obviously a hot commodity and could turn into a huge business. I don't think we will pursue this, but it is funny that they always talk about looking for their tent making and we found it right under their noses...

rules?

how tight are the rules at this place? The guy who has lived hereten months wanted to go see his girl at nine pm. To avoid question inghe climbed out the window and rode his motorcycle down the hill withthe engine off. I don't handle all these rules well.

Attitude of a learner

5 days in, and I have already learned a lot. Jordan and I are the only two people from the same state so there is a wide group of people. GFM has a really good vision to reach the people of the world that have not heard the gospel. The people here have huge hearts for the people of Oaxaca to hear the gospel for the first time. There are about 30 missionaries here, and I am older than about 25 of them, which is ridiculous.

There are definitely more rules than I am used to following, but I am beginning to adjust. I am not sure why, but here, I am really good at handstands...which is a good thing!

Viva Mexico

I am finally leaving for Latin America after several years of wanting to go. I first had a passion to go and serve in another country about two years ago when me and a friend Mike would talk about starting a city in Africa. I am not going to start a city yet, but I do have dreams of making a connection with one of the ministries I serve with that allows me to go back again and again and use my construction skills to somehow further their ministry. I am going to Mexico from June 7^th- August 9^th where I will be leading groups coming from the states doing a variety of things but rarely construction. When I leave Mexico, I will go to Managua, Nicaragua to do solely construction on three orphanages.

I just wanted to get this blog started before I left and I will be periodically updating it with some stories and pictures probably some humorous ones about me being an southern man in a non-southern environment.

I would appreciate your prayers as I go and serve in another country.

This is a picture of the first thing i ever built in mexico over Christmas. tres poco ninos (three little boys) tore it down in 1/2 the time it took me to build it.