MCC Nicaragua's Mascot

As we promised in our most recent newsletter, here is our story about turtles.

For nearly 20 years, MCC Nicaragua has had a turtle. No one knows where he/she came from. It's just always lived in the back yard. Previous generations of MCCers have provided various levels of care for 'Amaranta' (the source & meaning of the name are also unknown), from fruits and veggies to bread and milk. Amaranta happily crawls around the yard, wallows in the mud, and tries to get in the office. We actually think the latter is 'her' main life objective. If one of the two back doors are left open even a crack, one is likely to see Amaranta making a maddeningly slow dash inside to the refridgerator.

The amusing thing is that Angela, our MCC country representative who also lives in the house portion of the office, doesn't like turtles. You can't hear the turtle coming, and suddenly you've got a thing brushing up against your foot. It can be startling.

So, our main objective as an MCC team is to keep Amaranta out of the office. It almost becomes a game. She comes in; we take her out; she tries to come back it; we take her back out. One day she was actually running from me, trying to make it under the couch before I could pick her up. Fortunately, she's not that fast.

Here is Amaranta, along with the two of us posing for a photo. --Alan

Messiah College

We really enjoyed spending time with the group from Messiah College who was here for a couple weeks working with Food for the Hungry. They spent a day with us, hearing about MCC Nicaragua, hanging out with some young people from Anabaptist churches here, and heading to one of our partner organizations for a Misa Campesina (Catholic mass in the style of the accessible, contextualized masses in the countryside). We also enjoyed tagging along with them as they went to Chinandega, hiked through a bat cave, and swam in a crater lake. And we were glad to get to know their guides, including Andrea (who has other great pictures posted on her blog). It was great to meet them and hear their thoughts and reflections. It's a good place, that Messiah College!

(At right . . . hiking up Volcan Masaya in the evening. Spanish missionaries put up the cross to claim the volcano, which had received many human sacrifices and was known as the mouth of hell. Now that is a missionary! :))

Misioner@s: Gender Perspectives

A thought that didn't quite make the cut into the newsletter. :)

“Bienvenidos y bienvenidas a todos y todas. Gracias por estar con nosotros y nosotras hoy.” Welcome everyone. Thank you for being with us today. You might notice that this seems a long way to say a short greeting. A few people in Nicaragua do it anyway in an effort to use gender-inclusive language. The responses range from puzzlement to frustration, similar to responses to “politically correct language” in North America. In our process of language learning, we have a heightened awareness of the way culture is transmitted through language. For example, if there are cultural tendencies excluding or exploiting women, sometimes that appears in linguistic structures. In Spanish (and many languages), the masculine form swallows up the feminine. As “missionaries” who are part of God’s mission of salvation from all kinds of unhealthy structures (including those of exclusion and discrimination), how can we use language in the new, radical, inclusive ways of God’s Kingdom without encumbering our communication and imposing our cultural values on others? This is one of our many questions on our journey of understanding gender here and joining in the struggle of women.

Spring Newsletter available (updated)

We've posted our spring newsletter for you to read. Several of you had some trouble with the original links, but we think the problem is now resolved. Click the 'Spring 2007' link under the 'Newsletter' heading. You will be directed to another website (mediafire.com) where you will be given the option to download our newsletter. Click 'download' and you should be good to go.

Estelí: Land of cool nights

Several weekends ago we traveled 2 hours north to the city of Estelí. There we visited with the Castillo family, the future inlaws of our colleague Lydell. Estelí is in an agriculturally rich region; the surrounding area produces much of Nicaragua's rice, coffee, tobacco, and onions. They receive quite a bit of rain, and the temperatures are cooler because of higher altitude. After nearly a month and a half of sweltering temps here in Managua (see our friend Pamela's blog post for another perspective on Managua heat), we were grateful to get away. And wow, we slept well. We actually used a sheet at night and did not wake up already sweating. "Why do we live in Managua?"we wondered.

The Castillo family showed us fantastic Estelian hospitality. We ate well (rice & beans, good cheese, chicken-cheeseball soup) and had a great time laughing together. We also went to church with them and got our tails wooped in an all-church "sword-drill" match. We thought we knew our Bibles, but oh no...these folks were fast, and we didn't stand a chance!

Here are a few favorite photos...

Misioneros: Teaching and Learning

We had the opportunity on Saturday to bring some of our reflections/questions about "missions" to a group at the Nicaraguan Brethren in Christ Biblical Institute. We were ostensibly leading a workshop, but it's likely we learned more from them and they benefited more from one another.

Here are some highlights:
-Borrowing an idea from Luke Keefer, we compiled a list of consequences of sin (violence, hunger, sickness, broken families, etc.). When it came to listing "poverty," people had piercing and perceptive questions about what that word means. And shouldn't wealth be included too?

-One participant commented, "We believe that the gospel/salvation is holistic (not merely spiritual, but also physical and economic), but how do we communicate that without falling into a prosperity gospel (which is common here)--that God is going to give people wealth--it's a fine line . . . "

-A holistic picture of "conversion" as "turning"--with several examples from the Old Testament.

-It was really good for our Spanish too. We learned, for instance, that it's very hard to say 'Nebuchadnezzar' in Spanish (our homework is to practice this name 10 times).

On our bookshelves

A community that reads is a community that progresses

You might think that in the midst of this time of life, we don't have much time to read. Well, as it's turned out, we've been reading like crazy! We're continuing our pattern of reading good fiction out loud to each other, which has recently included Philip Gulley, John Grisham, The Red Tent, and Stones from the River. We're also slowly working our way up through Spanish literature, having graduated to "chapter books" (Harry Potter #1 for Alan and La Teleraña de Carlota/Charlotte´s Web for Beth). Beth has memorized La Mochila de Dora (The adventures of Dora the Explorer) from having read it to neighborhood kids about a million times. By the way, if you want to help us augment our collection of books for our neighborhood :), here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1J4QJAVK7ENUY/

Alan has lots of opportunities to read in preparation for his classes, including stuff by John Paul Lederach and John Driver, as well as reading about liberation theology from one of the sources, Gustavo Gutierrez. Beth is trying to wade through various books and articles on Nicaraguan history, politics, and current events. She just finished The Death of Ben Linder and a pamphlet called The Relevance of Anabaptist Nonviolence in Nicaragua Today--2 contrasting ideas about US citizen involvement when there is injustice perpetrated by our government. We have both been enjoying articles in the journal Mission Focus, as well as trying to read some Spanish articles on the theme of "mission." This has been partly out of our own interest, and partly because on Saturday we are leading a discussion with the Brethren in Christ Biblical Institute on the theme of "A vocabulary of God´s mission." The Secret Message of Jesus (by Brian McLaren) and Called to Question (by Joan Chittister) have also been a part of our thoughts and conversations recently. For the most part, we continue to recommend Brian McLaren--he synthesizes and makes accessible the thoughts of lots of good thinkers in this book (though we found the chapter on the peaceable kingdom pretty anticlimactic after the provocative, prophetic tone of most of the book).

We have been able to appreciate the gift of communication in lots of ways through this experience. Sometimes after a day of using all our mental efforts to communicate our ideas to people in Spanish, it is extremely refreshing to write and converse freely about theological concepts in our native language. We are glad to be doing this together.