{"id":910,"date":"2009-01-04T15:53:34","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T20:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=910"},"modified":"2009-01-04T15:53:34","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T20:53:34","slug":"nicaragua-faqs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=910","title":{"rendered":"Nicaragua FAQs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Nicaragua?<\/strong>
\nThat’s a long story.\u00a0 Back in 1999, I (Kristine) came to Nicaragua with Mercy Ships<\/a> to do relief work after Hurricane Mitch devastated the area.\u00a0 There had been a huge mudslide on the side of the volcano Casitas that wiped out many villages, killed more than 1,000, and left thousands more homeless.\u00a0 It was a life-changing experience for me, and I left after 5 months determined to come back and work here long-term.\u00a0 In Sept. 2001, I returned to work with Mercy Ships\u00a0 again.\u00a0 This time, I worked as an admin asst for our team, discipled a group of young girls, taught English, developed a community health education course that I taught, among many other things.\u00a0 We worked extensively with a group of “refugees” from the coffee crisis (when the coffee prices worldwide plummeted, many workers in the coffee plantations worked and worked for the promise of pay but never received it) who had settled on a piece of land the government had promised them called La Palmerita.\u00a0 They were in desperate, miserable circumstances when we found them.\u00a0 It was a long, hard process to help them go from stick coverings to plastic houses, and to get them basic things like food, water, and sanitation.\u00a0 Brian came to visit me several times while we were dating, and he grew to love Nicaragua as much as I.\u00a0 I loved my time in Nicaragua, and when I left in 2003 to get married, both Brian and I looked forward to when we could come back.<\/p>\n

Where is it and what is it like?<\/strong>
\nNicaragua is in Central America, actually due south of Alabama, between Costa Rica and Hondruas.\u00a0 It’s “summer” here, which means its the dry season.\u00a0 It won’t rain more than a few sparse showers for several months.\u00a0 It’s hot, dry and dusty.\u00a0 The landscape is dramatic, though, with a line of 9 volcanos stretching the length of the country.<\/p>\n

Volcanos?!?\u00a0 Are they active?\u00a0 Aren’t you worried they will erupt?<\/strong>
\nYes, they are actually mostly active, and you can see clouds of smoke\/steam above many of them.\u00a0 I’m not too worried that they’ll erupt because none did during the 2 years I was here.\u00a0 If any do erupt, it would most likely be ash and smoke, and it’s more of a nuisance than a danger.<\/p>\n

Where are you staying and what will it be like?<\/strong>
\nOur hotel, the Hotel San Juan de Leon<\/a> is very comfortable.\u00a0 Brian and I have one room with Josiah in a portable crib we borrowed from the Longleys.\u00a0 Analise and Abigail are sharing another room.\u00a0 We’ve both got a bathroom with hot water (though in the heat here, hot showers aren’t a necessity).\u00a0 Interestingly, the water is heated in the shower head.\u00a0 Another odd note, you can throw toilet paper in the toilet here because it could clog the systems.\u00a0 It took a couple times to the bathroom to remember that!<\/p>\n

We’ve got air conditioners (well, we do now… we just switched rooms yesterday because ours hadn’t been working) and industrial strength fans that keep us pretty cool.\u00a0 There’s internet in our hotel (though there wasn’t the first couple days, and the wireless isn’t working much to our frustration.\u00a0 This, though, is not surprising in Nicaragua.)<\/p>\n

We get a nice simple breakfast of fresh fruit (watermelon, papaya, pineapple and banana), fresh juice, toast with butter and jam, coffee and milk.\u00a0 Then we’re on our own for lunch.\u00a0 We’ve just found a great little cafeteria with delicous Nicaragua food for about $2 a plate that will be our frequent choice.\u00a0 There are other options, including Tip-Top, a fast-food chicken place, that the kids and I will do today for lunch.\u00a0 There’s also a well-stocked grocery store nearby, and we can use the kitchen here, if we need to.<\/p>\n

The streets are busy, the sidewalks are narrow and crowded with little stands selling all variety of things.\u00a0 Bikes, mopeds, trucks and taxis go cruising by and fly around the corners, so you’ve got to be alert.\u00a0 We’re walking nearly everywhere here in town, and we’ve learned how to navigate our little stroller over the potholes in the sidewalk, up and down the steep curbs and over the cobble stones.\u00a0 If we need to take a taxi, it’s 75cents each person here in town, so that’s an easy, cheap option if we need it.<\/p>\n

What will you be doing there?<\/strong>
\nWell, when we conceived this trip, we had lots of things we wanted to do and be a part of. But as we progressed with the planning, we really just felt God leading us to lay down our expectations and come to be used in whatever way He wanted to use us.\u00a0 We’ve got to be especially flexible since we’ve got the kids with us.\u00a0 We want to visit old friends, see the work of Nuevas Esperanzas<\/a>, just be open to whatever might come together for us to do.\u00a0 Brian’s already helping out with computers, we’re going to be visiting a well-child clinic with friends of ours who work for Food for the Hungry International, and the kids and I are looking forward to visiting Anna and Emily Longley’s preschool this next week.\u00a0 It can be a little tricky to find people here, so I’m praying God would really direct our connections this next week.<\/p>\n

Why are you taking the kids?<\/strong>
\nHonestly, we never even considered NOT taking the kids.\u00a0 They are a part of who we are.\u00a0 We want missions and God’s great big world to be something our kids grow up knowing firsthand.\u00a0 Yes, they are young, and I’m not sure how much they’ll remember, but it is an experience we wanted them to be a part of.\u00a0 Now that we’re here, it is hard at times.\u00a0 Whatever the challenges of dealing with kids in your own comfortable surroundings, they are multiplied in the heat, dust, crowds, foreign language, bumpy roads, small hotel rooms, etc.\u00a0 They have done really well, though, and it’s so fun to share this place with them.\u00a0 Analise is learning little bits of functional spanish, and Josiah is so cute pointing things out.\u00a0 “Wook!\u00a0 A Mic-a-wog-wa dump truck!”\u00a0 (A Nicaragua dump truck)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Nicaragua? That’s a long story.\u00a0 Back in 1999, I (Kristine) came to Nicaragua with Mercy Ships to do relief work after Hurricane Mitch devastated the area.\u00a0 There had been a huge mudslide on the side of the volcano Casitas that wiped out many villages, killed more than 1,000, and left thousands more homeless.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-eG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}