Happy International Day of the Woman

Felicidades a todas las mujeres del mundo, trabajando diario para salir adelante, proveer para sus familias, y construir un mundo más justo para tod@s. (Celebrating the women of the world, working hard daily to move forward, provide for their families, and make the world a more just place for everyone). See some of them here.

Fiestas

In case you were worried we are not having fun here . . .


Nicaraguans know how to party. And parties are not just for kids.


Here church leaders from the social commissions enjoy ice cream at their end-of-fiscal-year party.


Our (adult) neighbors invited us to a party complete with musical chairs and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. And as if this were not fun enough, I bet you all wish you could have seen Alan and me trying to salsa with a balloon balanced between us (the party game we lost miserably).

By the way, if you want to send some books . . .

We will always welcome more books in Spanish here! I try to keep updating this list with books that look good, but you can also feel free to send your own picks. I keep trying to find more books by Latin American authors (for example, from this recommendation list), but some of them are harder to get a hold of. You can contact us to find out the best way to get books down here.

Updated library

I don't think we have written to you all in awhile about our little library. First of all, a huge thank you to those of you who have donated books! We now have a nice collection of both fiction and non-fiction for various ages. All-time favorites include Pokemon, Buenas Noches Dora, David se Mete en Lios (David gets in trouble), and El Ciclo de Vida de la Rana (the life cycle of a frog).

We have had such a steady stream of kids and teenagers coming to our house to read that we decided to try a lending-library system on a small scale. I was nervous, but have been impressed at how responsible people can be when they have ownership of the project and understand the expectations clearly. The kids developed the rules (keep the book in a clean, dry place, do not eat while reading, do not fight with the books, etc.) and are responsible for explaining them to the other kids. They all put their names and addresses down when they have shown that they understand the rules. So far, we've been trying to talk with all their parents as well to let them know about the system. They can check out one book at a time. Some of the kids have been talking excitedly about how they want to move the library to our garage to have more room for lots of people to sit and read and how they can all take shifts cleaning and monitoring to make sure people are taking care of the books.

As if I wasn't already convinced of the value of literacy, living here has driven this even deeper. Developing imagination and creativity through reading will give them tools that they need to overcome the many challenges that confront them.

Articles by Nicaraguan women

Click here to see the most recent issue of the Brethren in Christ journal Shalom! online, which has a few articles by and about women we work with here.

A Nicaraguan Wedding

This past Sunday we attended the wedding of our good friends Lydell Steiner & Rebeca Castillo. Lydell just finished his term of service with MCC Nicaragua in January. He met Rebeca three years ago when he was in language school; they dated, he proposed, and on Sunday they took another step in their journey together.

Here are two photos: one of the happy couple, and another of Lydell's sister (Maria, standing next to Alan) and her friend (Jen, standing next to Beth) who flew down from the Virginia for the wedding. They both teach kindergarten in VA, and we wanted to give a shout out to their classes, who have been following our adventures through this blog. We tried to find Amaranta, our MCC turtle, but it seems she's gone hibernating. But we had a great time, anyway!

Books, Books, and more Books

A little project of mine (Alan) over the past 2 months has been to buy books for the seminary library. I've purchased about 150 books from publishers in the US, Colombia, and Nicaragua, and about half of them have arrived thus far. The books cover topics such as conflict transformation, theology, Anabaptist history, peacemaking, mission, biblical studies, biographies of noted peacemakers, gender, and more. It's been exciting to receive the books and think about how I can use them in my classes. Here is a picture of several of the books before I took them to the Seminary last week.