27 dresses

We were delighted to receive an invitation from a young couple we know to attend their wedding. As we arrived, we noticed a large group of people gathered outside the church. We hurried over and saw a lovely young lady in a wedding dress. But it wasn't our friend. Then we saw another, also not our friend. It turns out, there were not one, not two, but 27 couples getting married in the church today. 27 dresses, 27 weddings, 3.5 hours. A wedding marathon if there ever was one.

Getting Ready

December is a month of preparations. We have been experiencing this in a number of ways.

On our MCC team . . .
We enjoyed baking Christmas foods and then inviting some friends over for an advent service.

In our neighborhood . . .

Everyone has been working together to paint the streets, put up banners and balloons, and clean up to prepare for La Purisima (today and tomorrow). Earlier this week, we had an early morning visit from the traveling Virgin and her parade. For more on La Purisima, see December 2007 of this blog.

In our house . . . We have been decorating for Christmas and enjoying the mixture of old and new cultural traditions. We also just bought a lovely used crib from one of our neighbors! It became quite the neighborhood affair installing it in our house (the process included cutting out part of one of our doorframes). So now we are ready for this little one coming in 2 months.

Morning Routine (and thoughts about water)

Just thought we'd give you a glimpse into our day to day routine. We are generally "early to bed, early to rise" because it gets hot after 5:30 or 6 in the morning. Often, Beth does a little laundry, washing it on our cement washing block and hanging it on the line. We try to stay with an excercise routine--in the past this included an aerobic latin dance video called Zumba. Now Alan has an excercise regimen that includes various push-ups and sit-ups. Beth does some pre-natal yoga.

We then shower and refill the storage buckets before our water is turned off. This generally happens around 8am each day. It usually comes back in the evening, though recently we have been a couple days in a row with no water. While we are tempted to complain, we have at least one teammate who has not had water for 4 months! One of the ironies is that Nicaragua has plenty of fresh water between 2 large freshwater lakes, a large network of lagoons and rivers, and a high water table. However, contamination and deforestation are quickly drying up and infecting much of this natural resource. Additionally, problems in the national budget and infrastructure often make distribution of existing water a challenge. Anyway, for us it is a good discipline to use water less wastefully. For example, we use leftover water from clothes or dishes to flush toilets, and we are learning to never allow the water to run unnecessarily while washing or showering.