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Jinotega

Jinotega, Nicaragua


Our House and Our Street

So we've arrived in Jinotega and have been crazy busy for the last several days. With the visit of both the C.O. and the D.O. there have been meetings every night. I feel real compassion for our one elder in the congregation, he has to be stressing about the workload. I'll include more about our traveling overseers in the next post.

Field service has been our bread and butter up till today. 9 out of 10 doors that I've talked at I've had good calls. Most of the people are quite friendly about our terrible Spanish and help us along. We do lots of business witnessing. You just go into the store, ask for the owner, and then hit your presentation. This is not something that we do in Scottsville very often and so I was a bit hesitant at first but the territory is quite used to it. This morning I went with another brother into a clinic and we asked to speak to the doctor. We wound through the little compound into the doctors office, (by the way, the place was called something like “The New Day Christian Clinic”, I have no idea what religion they were, so I was thinking, “Yikes! What's going to happen here?”) when we arrived in her office the personnel of the entire office entered as well. This was in total 7 persons. The brother I was with spoke for about 5 minutes, using several scriptures, about the time when all doctors will be out of jobs. I'm not sure if that's taking personal interest or knocking the job of the poor doctor, but it went well enough and the brother didn't have enough literature for everyone in the office. He featured the brochure about God permitting suffering and it seemed to go over quite well. Wonderful huh? I can't wait until we're able to communicate effectively to the people in the field and start adapting our presentations.

I could go on with experiences but I thought you also might like to see our house. Our house is, I would say, average for the city of Jinotega. We have a garage in our kitchen. I know it sounds weird but it's the way it is, and it works great for us! Since we have no car, this means we have a large space in the front of our house. Andrew, the brother who lived in the place shortly before us, utilized this space for ping pong.
Thus, the large table in the front doubles as our kitchen table/study area and, when things get slow for us, a ping pong table. We could probably sit 12-15 people at the table at one time! I'm sure we'll make good use of it. The house has two rooms, and two bathrooms, only one has a hot shower so if you come to visit you we'll have to arm wrestle to see who gets that one! :)

Our street is quite nice and quiet by Nica standards. Most walls don't meet the ceiling in your house so you hear everything outside. Almost directly across the street we have a small Evangelical church. This is the equivalent to the Pentecostals in the U.S. So lots of singing takes place with regularity here. However, most of this takes place while we're away so it's not too bad. You have to put up with crazy barking dogs everywhere, someone behind our house has a goat and some roosters, and you hear all the conversations outside. Why, then, can we say it's quiet? Most noise comes from the traffic going down the street. You fail to realize how noisy vehicle are in the states since most times you're either in one, and even old cheap cars have some noise barrier, or you're inside a building and you see them passing by. Nearly everything is a diesel, and most vehicles have no exhaust, add these two together and you get, LOUD NOISE! We live on a side street and it seems most of our neighbors don't have vehicles either. So it's nice and quiet. For the ambient noise, (I.e. the aforementioned dogs, goats, roosters, neighbors with marital problems, etc.) we sleep with ear plugs and hope for the best. That's all for now, stay tuned I'll post some more on our C.O. And D.O. next week! These brothers are incredible!




permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 14, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged House and Jinotega

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Nessy's First Entry

Jinotega, Nicaragua


It's finally Nessy's turn to write. I want to tell you that I love Nicaragua because every 2 or 3 days a tree ripe fresh mango drops off the neighbors tree that's over our house. It sounds like a bomb when it crashes on the roof, you know the kind of roof that looks like a wavy ruffle chip, and lands in our little patio right outside our back door. The mangoes are small, sweet and perfect.

I also wanted to tell you about a Return Visit that I have and what happened to his family. A few years ago they moved to Jinotega and found a house they wanted to buy that the owners were in a hurry to sell. Which I say house but it's more like an outbuilding that you would see in Buckingham with a dirt floor.

The owners quickly did the paperwork and the family moved in. What they didn't know about the house was that there was a concrete hatch in the floor. The hatch was poorly sealed and what it covered was an old septic tank. The uncle, who was a large man, unknowingly stood on the concrete lid and it collapsed under him. The fumes were so overpowering that before the firefighters could get him out he died. Three of the firefighters that were exposed to the fumes died as well. The Young man telling us the story about his uncle was about 25 years old and after telling us this story he used a local expression that went something like, “what can you do if it's God's will?” Jenny Bloxsom asked if he felt that it was something that God would want. He thought about it and drew the correct conclusion. We showed him James 1:13, 14 and reasoned that it is highly unlikely that God would drown a man in a septic tank to accomplish his will. He did appreciate the thought and is interested in knowing what is God's purpose for the Earth but I'll have to admit that's the first time I've had to reason on something like that!


permalink written by  Shane Perry on August 25, 2008 from Jinotega, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Shane and Vanessa's Nicaraguan Adventure
tagged House and Mangoes

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