We are finishing our first trimester in our new assignment in Telpaneca and it has certainly been interesting. Here is a quick tour of our garden and a guide to hooking up a washing machine without a drainage system.

We made a few changes on the blog. You can now subscribe so you get emailed when there is a new post (won’t happen that often don’t worry).

You are welcome to visit our sponsored links (adverts) by the end of the month we might have enough to buy ourselves a coffee.

Hello Telpaneca!

We went from a congregation of 82 publishers to a congregation of 6, including us. Fortunately there are students that also attend now on a regular basis. In a month our average Sunday meeting attendance has doubled from 7 to 14 whoohoo!

But I must say that we´re having a lot of fun getting to know the publishers and the communities around us. The distances between studies is an issue. One whole side of our territory will be isolated from us when the rains start in October and the Rio Coco floods the bridge. More about bridges later.

The day we were moving in to our new house, these teachers came to the door looking for literature. They work out in the communities and use our literature as reading material for the students. We´ve found a great respect for our literature here. Even the Mayor asked me to bring her a back issue of one of the Watchtowers.

This is a view from across the river looking back at the center of Telpaneca.

However, to get to the neigborhoods it´s a little more complicated. We take this route on Tuesdays to get to a group of about 150 houses. Most of the people there used to live near the center but they were relocated when Hurricane Mitch wiped out their houses. Amazingly the river rose almost 30 feet.

While Andrew was giving a reading lesson…

I was focused on the mans wife braiding her granddaughters hair. She didn´t know I was taking the picture so you can´t see the back. She was interweaving bits of leather into the little girls hair to make firmer braids. She said her own mother tied her hair in the same way. They think it helps hair to grow faster and stay soft. If I could have met this womans grandmother 100 years ago I bet the house and the customs wouldn´t have been much different. Sometimes it really feels like we´re stepping back in time.

These kids took me down to the river to show me how to get fresh water from the sand. They dug a deep hole, waited for it to fill with water, started scooping out the first murky fill, and then filled containers of fresh water to bring home. Their house has no running water so after going to class in the morning this little girl makes several trips to the river to haul water and also washes clothes in the current.

This little boy seems to have it a bit easier. After taking a dip in the river he was having a great time playing the classic spin the tire with a stick.

We´ve had a few chances to go play in the river ourselves. Since we´re in a drought at the moment the sandy river bed makes a great place to play soccer. Here Andrew got a little too into the game. Fortunately the sister who went face first into the sand is very easygoing.

We also have a new publisher this month. Milagros is 13. Her father was a baptized witness but left his family and the truth about 2 years ago. Both Milagros and her mother have certainly had a hard time of it but are progressing well. Her mother, Margarita, hopes to be a publisher soon.

Milagros first day in service was a marathon. We started out in Telpaneca but then took a bus, actually a cattle truck out to a place called Santo Domingo.

This is the view from the village. We were supposed to do a ´everyone jumping in the air´picture but either Andrew took the picture as we were landing or the 3 of us couldn´t get off the ground. Either way it´s a good memory of a great day in a beautiful place. Milagros took her first doors and was able to go on a few studies as well.

I told you I´d have more to say about bridges. The one below is my nightmare..

The Golden Gate of Nicaragua. Several people have fallen through rotten boards. Thankfully I just got a tetanus shot so I can hold on for dear life to the rusty sides.

This past Saturday I braved the crossing for the second time. Of course Andrew was there as well but it´s not as traumatic for him. Somehow he thinks it´s amusing to make the bridge swing when he crosses. Of course he´s kind enough not to do that when I´m with him. The neighborhood we were headed to is called El Barro. It has 55 houses. None of them have running water. Quite a few are also without electric. Milagros came along as well as Ivania and Carolina who are baptized publishers. I guess I should be glad we found interest including a woman who would like a literacy class. Unfortunately it means braving the big mean bridge on a regular basis;)

Ivania has a baby named Giselle. She´s becoming quite enamoured with Andrew. He´s been helping share the load of caring for her when Ivania comes out in service.

These little girls live about a 45 minute from the KH. The father of one of them used to attend meetings. We met them on a Thursday and were impressed with how polite and attentive they were. To my surprise they made the walk in for the Sunday meeting all by themselves. The road they take is incredibly dusty and hot and their only shoes are flip flops. They showed up with big smiles though and commented all through the WT study.

This is a typical house and yard outside of the center.

When we first walked into our new house it felt like walking into a cave.

However, Andrew and one of the brothers that helped us move got right to work putting together our furniture.

Now it looks more like a well furnished cave;)

To the left of the picture below you´ll see we have a sink. No small feat. We brought the sink with us and Andrew had to install about 30 yards of PVC waterpipe.

There were a few glitches. I´m not sure if you can see the water spewing out of the broken pipe below but we weren´t quite sure how to fix it since there´s no way to turn off the main.

Enter Cesar the plumber.

He created a homemade coupling by heating one tube so that it would stretch to fit the joining tube inside.

Now that is an ingenious, inexpensive, fix it yourself lesson to remember folks.

What I most enjoy about our house is the garden. It´s a bit overgrown at the moment but we have Noni, Papaya and Lime trees. Plus Aloe, cilantro, oregano, mint, and hot pepper plants. We´ve started a little garden of tomato and sweet peppers from seed so I´m waiting to see how they do.

The Noni plant attracts tons of butterflies and hummingbirds.

So thats all for now. Miss you loads and hope to hear from you soon.

Two nights later we had a nice surprise when the whole congregation got together and put on some ´going away´skits and dancing. First up was a young brother who imitated Andrew conducting the Theocratic School. The sister to the left was imitating me interpreting to sign.

Nina, Anielka, and Massiel danced to a song about Jinotega…

and Raquel and Maggie took the lead in a country line dance.

We loved the Mariachi styling of Patricia Caro but only have it on video. We may be changing Blog sites. When we do I´ll upload some videos.

There were quite a few deaf at the party. The brother on the left is Hayder. He goes to one of the sign language congregations in Managua but was in Jinotega to visit his mom and came to our meetings.  He was one of the first deaf to be baptised in Nicaragua.

Juanita (in the middle of the picture below) is one of the deaf students in Jinotega. I was the householder for her first talk on the theocratic school. It was the week before we left. Juanita and I were on stage signing the talk while two sisters who know sign were on the front row of the audience translating what we signed into spanish. She´s hoping to be a publisher soon.

Tania, Elio, Nestor, Gabi y Luis…Nos hacen mucha falta. Les esperamos aqui en Telpaneca. Felicidades por las metas que van logrando. Siguen adelante.

A few months ago the Galeanos put together a great dress up and eat pizza party for the kids in the hall. Here you see Andrew and Isidro (a deaf brother from Managua) getting to the pizzas before the kids.

I got to dress up in my Traje Tipico…

And Andrew got to show the kids what it would have looked like if King David had played American football;)

Jesus and Patricia Caro did a little play for the kids. There were other skits that were really funny but my camera battery didn´t last.

We went on some fun rurals.

This lady lives about an hour from Jinotega. She´s deaf but hasn´t had any contact with the deaf community. I tried to use illustrations so that she could describe what she was seeing with home signs. Unfortunately she lives too far out for the sign group to visit her on a regular basis. It still amazes me that there are people without a fully developed language. I´m intrigued by how their thought process works.

Back to Jinotega life..

Want to get rid of pesky bugs and mosquitos? ….

Nothing better than a Nicaraguan exterminator.

These guys are sent in by health services several times a year to keep the mosquito population down by giving every house a healthy dose of carbon dioxide. Dangerous you say…well they usually give you a 30 minute warning before they get to your house and highly suggest you grab any creatures you´d rather keep alive i.e parrots, dogs etc. and wait on the street until the toxic gas has done it´s work. They recommend 20 minutes or so.

If you have any other problems, an incurable disease, failed business, family feuds, vices or anything else that may bother you, take advantage of this Help Center that will anoint you with Holy Oil from Israel absolutely free. Amazingly this place is full several nights a week. I´m not sure how many people the annointing oil has actually helped but it sure is popular.

Last but not least we´ll miss seeing this sweet lady who likes to sit on Jinotegas main street.

While we were in the comfort of the KH one of the other congregations that shares the double hall complex had their memorial in the parking lot.There was an attendance of 50 (30 deaf) for the Sign Language congregation. Here’s a picture of Andrew and I with most of the deaf.

A few weeks later we headed out to Pearl Lagoon for the Special Talk in English. George and Heather are serving there as special pioneers. There is one other publisher in their group. According to Vianica.com the population is around 11,000 mostly english creole speakers. There were 26 in attendance for the public talk. They had to walk through quite a downpour of rain to get there. The KH is the living room of George and Heather’s house. A particularly interesting visitor was the gentleman with the Captain Love t-shirt who you can see sitting behind me to the left.Most houses are made of wood and many are on stilts.

Andrew and I took a rainy walk to the small community of Awas. Everyone we met seemed to be related to everyone else. They speak Miskito, Creole, and Spanish. We came across a group of kids playing slip and slide in the waterlogged grass. Andrew of course had to join in.This family (for a small fee;) rescued us from the rain and cooked up a nice fish soup to warm us up.The fresh coconut was delicious!The bus we took for the first leg of the 16 hour trip home had to refuel halfway. Fortunately they’re prepared for the lack of gas stations. Love you all. Enjoy the convention!

It was an adventure just walking the dock…..

Most of the week we spent in the ministry. With Andrews expertise in writing out spanish presentations phonetically mom and dad became quite the experts in the door to door work;) Unfortunately it was raining most of the time (which I think Dad actually preferred;) but they got a good taste of our life in Jinotega. Of course now that it’s confirmed that we have to move next month they’ll have to come back to see us settled in our new place;)

Before our sailing adventure Andrew and I were able to pick out our first handmade hammock. We were ripped off like all gringos visiting Granada but it certainly came in handy on our next trip.

We spent 16 hours on a ferry to cross Lake Managua. It looks pleasant here but by 1 in the morning it was quite cold and wet. We put into port at San Carlos at 5:30 AM.

sunrise breakfast in San Carlos

The evening before, we passed the island of Ometepe. The name means ‘between two hills’ in Nahuatl. The island is formed by two large volcanoes;Volcan Concepcion (which you can see below) and volcan Madera. Lava flowing from the two volcanoes created an isthmus between them to form a single island.

Our final destination was another two hours  from San Carlos. The transport of choice can only be described as an old opensided bus plopped on the water with a speedboat motor attached to the back. Along the way as people got on and off at ‘boatstops’ the captain was ever vigilant with weight distribution. Whenever the boat felt like it would roll he’d simply tell the largest person to move to a seat on the other side of the boat. It was a pleasant ride but we were happy to get to El Castillo. It’s so named because of a fort on the hill above the town. It was built by the spanish in 1675 to try to halt the passage of pirates to Granada.

Riverbus

El Castillo

The Fort

There is a small congregation there being helped by three special pioneers. They split their week between El Castillo with 5 baptized and 11 unbaptized publishers and Sabalos, a river town about 1/2 hr speedboat trip away. In Sabalos there are 3 baptized and 3 unbaptized publishers.

Andrew gave a beautiful talk to an audience of 32 in El Castillo.

El Castillo KH

Of course we couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit the surrounding Rain Forest. We started out with a trip on horseback.

It was a very muddy day. It didn’t take me long to fall off my horse when she got tangled up and stumbled on some thick vines. I then focused on watching the ground for other obstacles and subsequently got knocked in the head when we passed under a low branch.

Fortunately we continued on and were able to see this beautiful little creature. It’s called the strawberry poison dart frog. It produced alkaloids to deter predators. The poison isn’t lethal for humans but the Indians used it to make darts for hunting animals.

We also took an incredible 32 kilometer kayac trip. Going down river was a breeze but it got a bit tough when we (Andrew;) actually had to paddle into the Indio Maiz reserve. It was well worth the trip.

If you can spot the kayac in the bottom right corner of the picture below it will give you an idea of the immensity of the jungle. It was just the guide, Andrew and I on our little trip.  As we paddled along howler monkeys were hooping from the trees and I was on a constant lookout for crocodiles. Fortunately we didn’t see one until we were safe in a speedboat that picked us up at the end of the day.

Can you spot the guide?

Rio San Juan

ride to town

If you think this is just a rock look again. The lump on the left side is actually a croc who immediately after we took this pic slid into the water.

We also had a rather startled visitor drop from a tree into the boat.

He is aptly named the green iguana. They are often hunted as a food source but Andrew quite kindly threw it onto an island we were passing.

These little caimens live all along the river but also under the houses which are all on stilts.

I couldn’t help but take a bunch of pixs of these little boys playing with the crabs they caught. The Nicaraguan river culture is very open and friendly. It has a definite caribean feel.

Last but certainly not least of our pix for this blog is my favourite outfit of the month. Old-school cowboy meets modern technology. I think he was looking for cellphone reception.

As for local news, our congregation is doing extraordinarily well. We have 81 pubs 12 of whom just began publishing in the past 2 months. The young couple in our last blog who were recently married are included in that number.

We also had a visit from our Sign Language CO and have been approved for a public talk and WT directly in Sign Language once a month. We’ll let you know how that progresses.

We miss you all. Look forward to hearing from you soon.

Andrew and Jenny

The family here to the left have been studying for about 4 months. They’ve already made tremendous changes in their lifestyles and have recently begun to attend all of the meetings. To the right you see their youngest son Luis getting a better view of the drama with Andrews help.

The sister playing the ‘spoiled girl’ in the drama studied with Vanessa Listol and I about 5 years ago when she was in her in  early teens . She’s now a regular pioneer. Her older sister Antonieta was baptized at this convention.

They´ve really made the truth their own.

Another couple in our congregation are studying with Vladimir and Jamileth. They were just married two weeks ago. It was obviously an important step in their progress. They’ve been attending the meetings regularly for 5 months. There was a small fiesta for them after the wedding ceremony. You can see them below cutting their wedding cake with the help of their 5 year old daughter.

Andrew takes the group out on Fridays in a neighborhood called Villa Valencia. When I first got here there were a few squatter homes on the mountainside but now weekly we see more trees cut to build small structures covered in plastic or sheet metal. There is no running water and few latrines for these homes. Many of them are hoping that donations from other countries will be used to build a new neighborhood with more secure housing.

There’s a nice group of young people in our congregation that really put a lot into their ministry. Massiel is the young sister you see below She also supports our sign language groups as one of the interpreters.

The brother you see next to Andrew is Sebastian. They were good friends in Spain and after he and his wife Manuela came for a “visit” to Nicaragua they’ve decided to stay on long term.

That was our December. Hope everyone back home is well. Miss you all.

Andrew and Jenny

Of course a trip to Nicaragua wouldn’t be complete without some sort of close encounter with wildlife. The night before Heather left we went on a sunset tour of Volcan Masaya which included entering a bat cave one by one and spending a few minutes in the dark with thousands of furry, flying creatures that, thanks to their incredible sonic abilities, don’t collide with your face.

Speaking of wildlife if anyone knows what this little creature is let me know. In my experience it’s the only insect I’ve seen that seems to have a head on both ends.

Going back a few months, we wanted you to see a picture of Andrew’s pioneer school class.

I’ve also included a picture of

what can happen in hot weather when

you run out of plain white undershirts. Unintentional advertising.

Some free advertising for Design;) We’re still willing to run a central american office by the way;

The tract campaign went well. I was even able to do a little riverside witnessing. Fortunately we had some 4X4 help to get to the other side.

Last but certainly not least we wanted to slowly start introducing you to more people in our congregation. This is Josefa Dominguez (better known as Chepita). She’s the adopted grandmother of everyone I know. A 70ish going on 20 chipper addition to our service groups. She’s still a regular pioneer and backbone of the congregation. We just didn’t realize what a cardshark she is until I caught her in the act at a recent congregation party.;)

That’s it for now. Miss everyone loads, hope to hear from you soon.

Ryan and the infinite puddle

We were proud of him for deciding to come on the most extreme rural day of the year. It happens only once a year for a reason, its a 8 hour hike over two of the highest peaks in the region. It´s hard work, crazy hard… some of the time you´re actually happy you decided to go on it. In fact it has become somewhat of a rite of passage. The friends have stories of how each needgreater and special pioneer has coped with the hike, normally pretty nasty and embarrasing stories of dehydration, fainting, and near death. Nothing better than making fun of the gringos!

About three major communities in our territory can only be accessed on foot or by horse, La Cal, Las Mesitas and the one we´re going to this Thursday, can´t remember the name.

It was great fun! The views were amazing, and the cheerful company of the brothers and sisters made it a memorable day. Once you get there (3 and a half hours later) everyone rushes to get a house. There are only 20 in the “town centre” (i.e. a rocky lane that winds round a deep valley). Fortunately you can stay for up to an hour and a half at a door.

Andrew was assigned with Ryan and we had some fine conversations with 4 householders that really appreciated us taking the time to visit them. One of the greatest challenges is that most of them can´t read which makes it hard  to provide quality training when you only visit once a year.

However one of our last doors was with a young woman, the sister of the local teacher, that was amazing. She was quick and enthusiastic and promised to study the Teach book we left her. We taught her how to study the book, asked her to jot down any questions she may have, and gave her the address of the KH.

Ryan showed us how its done at his doors with well prepared presentations. Amazing how much Spanish Ryan, Shane and Vanessa have learnt in a month.

We also try to preach to every single person we meet on the way. Some of them take this route every day to buy and sell produce in the market.

Our Friday territory is also a great hike to look forward to. Half the territory hangs onto a mountainside. Mainly wood and plastic houses that struggle to stay up. Below you can  see Jason, Shane and I at a door in that territory.

We miss you all! Please keep up the letters and emails we love them.