G'day Gibbins: Nicaragua Day 2

I'm back to tell you about Day 2 in Nicaragua. I'm still afraid these posts will be too long, too jumbled, but I also need to get it all out there as a way of processing it all. I don't want the trip to be a 1-week journey; I'd like it to be life-changing for me, for my family, maybe even for you.

Sunday began bright and early. The sun comes up early here and I was awake at 5:15! Those of you who know how much I love to stay in bed until at least 7 am can tell that this is early!

I headed out to the porch area and met up with some early AM coffee drinkers. The porch was really nice; I wish we could've spent more time there.

Breakfast was fine: cereal, toast, fruit, eggs (not for me).
Then we were off to the village. I was nervous about what awaited us there. This would be our first exposure to the people we would be pouring our lives into for the next 5 days. It was about a 20 minute drive to village of San Blas. As we left the main road, the dirt roads became narrower and bumpier as we went. The houses became smaller and less sturdy as we went. Finally we stopped at the village. As we exited the van, we could hear singing and followed the voices up a trail. The church service was held at one house, under a tarp roof, with plastic chairs. We were immediately ushered in, as women, men, and children gave up their chairs for us. I ended up on the front row, definitely not a place I'm comfortable! There were several hymns in Spanish and we were invited up to introduce ourselves. We did lots of handshaking and nodding. I was definitely getting nervous about my lack of Spanish!
When it was time for the sermon, the kids left for their class. Kristin, Theresa, Karen, and I joined them.

Theresa read them a story from their Spanish bible and then we headed back to the main service.

Here's a view of the church from the back.

After the sermon and children's class, they invited the children to come forward to read or sing. Almost all of them took a turn! This is sweet, little Erlinda singing. It made me think we should have our kids more involved in our church services.

Just before the service was over, Adrian gave us the signal that it was time to leave. We felt a little awkward leaving before they were done, but did as we were told. Perhaps, they would've kept adding songs until we left, thinking we expected more.
This is what I emailed to Troy after church: It was good. Really got rid of a lot of legality and celebrated the root of the Gospel.
When we got back to the van, we checked out the drill site while we waited for the villagers to catch this guy:

Yep, that's our dinner for Sunday night!
Lunch back at the compound was grilled chicken on a bed of lettuce. The food here so far has been right up my alley! We had passionfruit juice to drink, which was amazing!
After lunch came the much-antipated meeting with Scarleth. We all were looking to her to ease anxieties and answer questions. What we got was our first curveball of the week! Pretty much all we had been told about her was wrong, except that she was new. Scarleth is very young, and this job as hygeine coordinator is her first, ever. We were told she would be happy to teach the lessons with us as assistants or to let us do all the teaching while she translated. To make a lot of complaining very short, I will say that not only was she not happy to teach the lessons, but she also told us that all the lessons and crafts we had prepared were not going to be done because the kids had already done those at other wells. WHAT?!?! Oh, and we should come up with crafts for the moms, too because we'd be teaching only them in the mornings. WHAT?!? When she showed up the supply cabinet (which was a total mess), we also learned that all the supplies we were told would be available in-country (puppets, diarrhea doll, tippy tap) weren't actually available.
I left that meeting feeling very confused, discouraged, and frustrated. I had 2 lessons to teach on Monday, so I knew Sunday evening would be full of scrambling to come up with something.
After our meeting, we headed out for some sightseeing and shopping in town. The market was pretty similar to those I've seen in other countries, but I found the vendors less pushy, which was nice.

After sightseeing, while we waited for dinner, we re-organized the craft closet, hoping to get a clearer view of what was available to us. Also, hoping to make Scarleth's job easier.

Dinner wasn't good. I wish I had a picture! It was a soup with a chicken leg sticking out plus some chicken/rice/cheese meatballs and some vegetables that I didn't recognize. I did taste it (you should be proud!), but ended up having a Clif bar instead.

After helping clean the kitchen with Jim, I worked on coloring pages and a puppet for my lessons. I can tell you that the complaining about Scarleth continued until Deanna said, "Have you guys prayed aboutt this? Because you should." We finally listened to her and felt much better about what was to come.

So, that's Day 2. Meanwhile, in San Antonio, this was going on: