Busy Times

Whether we call it "the season", "the summer", "peak time" (or late at night, something less complimentary) there's no doubt that this is the busiest time of year for us. This is the time of year when Mision Para Cristo hosts dozens of groups of workers from the U.S. It's an exciting season. But it's also a busy season.

each blue line on the calendar represents a team of visiting workers

The days are long, our sheet folding muscles get sore, the stores run out of bread, the trucks need repairs, the place that we were sending a team of workers has a schedule change, the grill runs out of gas halfway through a batch of 250 chicken legs, the water goes out, the power goes out, the water's still out, drivers get sick, toilets are always clogged, somebody has a special dietary requirement they just remembered in the middle of supper, the construction crew realizes they forgot necessary materials after driving all the way to the job site, personalities conflict, and Oh yeah, the whole department will be on vacation the same week you have 94 visiting workers in town.

It is so easy among all the busyness for me to get focused on putting out the fires in front of me, that I can forget why we are doing these things at all. It's easy for me to forget that we are not just here to feed, house, and occupy a building full of visitors. We're not here just to provide an eye-opening experience to some teenagers, or refresh the stale spirits of some overworked ministry leaders. We're not just here to distribute food or t-shirts or bouncy balls.

We are part of a powerful force. We are part of the body of Christ himself. We have the opportunity to accompany Him in the work He is doing in our world, and even take part with Him.
I often forget what an honor that is.

Habakkuk 3:2
Lord, I have heard of your fame;
    I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
    in our time make them known

Psalm 90:16-17
Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

I think this is easy for me to lose sight of, because most of the time when I am "serving God" it doesn't look like a Bible Story poster. God's never asked me to raise my hand across a sea while He parts the water, or gather up baskets of leftover food from one guy's lunch. No...being a part of the work God is doing is mostly getting up while it is still dark to bake 240 muffins, putting away the stuff that gets left out, wiping up spills, tracking down extra pillows, sharpening colored pencils, being a listener.

It's easy for me to lose sight of the fact that I am a part of something mighty--because my human eyes aren't good at seeing "parts".  Deep down, I don't want to "be a part of something". I want to be the whole something. I want to plant the seed, see it leap to life right before my eyes and pick the fruit while the mud of planting is still fresh on my hands.
Don't you?

Someone from one of the recent visiting groups was reflecting on their day. He had just seen a deeper side of poverty than he had known, and was struggling with his inability to share his hope in Christ as fully as he'd have liked to.

I know that frustration only too well.
This was the only answer I could give him: We are like tuna fisherman.
*click the link and check out this one minute video*
**I don't like videos either, but it's like one single minute, it will be worth it, honest**

Leave aside any politics of commercial fishing--these men understand that they are part of a body. Not only does each worker do the job assigned to him, there is an implicit trust that everyone else is going to do their part as well. None of the guys on the poles turn their heads to see what becomes of the fish they hook, they trust the rest of the body to collect their catch and care for it appropriately.

And that's what "the busy season" has really been about. Serving soup, dispensing glasses, presenting Bible lessons, playing basketball, visiting the sick, making blocks, reading books, distributing bibles, sharing a pocket full of candies--as these crowds of visitors come and drop a line into the water, we position ourselves to be ready in the coming months to rightly handle the catch.

And whether you get to be the one who raises your staff across the suddenly parting sea, the one who in faith walks out into that impossibly dry road, or the one who recounts the story to your children generations later--we are all participating in the mighty works of His hands.

Luke 7:22
 So he replied to the messengers, Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Fruit of the day: Jicaro

I find it amazing that after over two years here, I am still constantly learning about new fruits. This is one I had seen many times without really realizing it. It wasn't until I dug in and started asking questions, that I realized how many times I have encountered it without knowing. 

This is Jicaro. The ones around here are small, about twice the size of a softball--but the ones that come from up on the Rio Coco are as big as a basketball.

Jonathan brought back a whole sack of giant jicaro from the River. 

The big ones are even bigger than a coconut!

Left to right: coconut, giant jicaro, regular jicaro

While on the tree they are green or yellow. As they dry they get progressively darker brown. Every time a group of visitors comes they ask me about the bright yellow fruits growing oddly from the black bark of a very distinctive tree. Even once I knew enough to answer "jicaro"  I still didn't really understand what they were.

not my pictures--but weird looking, huh?

A very tough, smooth wooden shell encloses a mass of seeds and stickiness not unlike what you'd find inside a pumpkin. When green they are really hard to crack open, and the stuff inside smells like a haunted middle-school locker-room. (by which I mean it is not a pleasant smell) Once they are mature and dry the shell cracks smartly--and the insides smell like a brewery. 

While visiting on the Rio Coco, I asked a woman if those big fruit were edible. She said they were used for making bowls--so I assumed them to be completely inedible gourd-type things. And that is kind of correct. They are not only used as practical containers, but are a popular canvas for artists who carve them into special drinking cups, and other decorative objects. 

also not my pictures. I have no explanation for why I thought they were made from coconuts.

The fact that they are so often made into cups should have been a hint. Because jicaro is in fact used widely in a local drink. I have heard it referred to here as horchata,  pinol, and semillias de jicaro (jicaro seeds). While horchata and pinol also have other variations in other Latin American countries, I haven't heard of anyplace else that uses jicaro. 

The drink is made by grinding the dried seeds along with dried maize and spices like cinnamon and clove. Then milk or water is added and the seeds are left to steep. Sugar is added, and you drink the liquid along with the "grit" from the grains. It is quite filling. 

You can also run down to the corner store and buy some already made up. 

Jicaro! 

Something's beginning

Where do I even begin? I want to share how very excited I am about a project that I see amazing potential in.  And I want to share how excited I am that God has arranged partnerships to make this project possible, before we even knew what He was up to!

One of the great needs here in Nicaragua is education. Our schools function very poorly. The reasons for this are broad, and not quickly solvable. Our spiritual training in the churches is also an area of weakness, and shares many of the same challenges. It has been easy for me to become discouraged, as I see sooo many needs I don’t know where to begin. So many people send materials or offer help—but the challenge of matching the help that’s given to the abilities and needs of the educators is a truly daunting task.

But now we have a plan.

It is only a beginning. But it is an exciting beginning.

A major inspiration came from John & Elma Clark’s various adventures in creating reusable materials for Joy Bus and Bible Hour programs. We saw a real challenge in our local churches feeling dependent upon styles of instruction that rely heavily on consumable materials which they just don’t have the resources to replace.

Additionally, many  groups that have come to work have brought or sent individual Bible lessons to present during their time here, but there was no effective way of equitably sharing those limited materials  with a couple of dozen congregations.

Our beginning? We’re creating a Bible class curriculum library. 

Using the special donation provided by the Deming Church of Christ’s “Yard Sale for Nicaragua” we purchased simple things like paper and tape and photo copies, which allowed us to organize the materials we had on hand that were not being used effectively.

We are creating packets of materials that are organized by their “scripture address” in the Bible. We hope this will make the materials flexible, easy to add to, and will help us avoid creating a curriculum that runs for a year and subsequently needs to be replaced. Teachers can use this resource chronologically or by themes and topics, and hopefully will come to see themselves as capable of creating their own programs and not dependent upon a set of lessons provided externally.

Check-out systems of various kinds have had challenges in our region. We have no public or private libraries of any kind in our department, due to the challenges of maintenance and management. For this reason, we have been piloting the curriculum library with select groups for about 3 months now.  Last month we opened it for the first time to all the congregations we work with.  We know there will be challenges in learning to share and manage these materials, but we are excited by the potential and the positive reception the plan has received from all the users.

This is only the beginning. We finally have a strategy—we are organizing the odds and ends of donated materials into a useable, flexible, accessible resource. But now we see how much more we need!

You can help. We need your help.

Many of our Bible class teachers have virtually no experience or training with teaching methods, and some have very little Bible knowledge of their own. Many are young teenagers trying their best to provide something for the kids in their congregations.

One of the types of materials most effective for our purposes are illustrated Bible stories. With some pictures to show the children, we can print the Bible text from a Spanish Bible and provide our teachers with an easy to use, effective, re-usable tool for their class.

So: has your congregation got some old flipbooks or posters lying around that aren’t being used much? Do you know somebody who does? Can you print or color some Bible story pictures for us? Have you got some great ideas to share?  Do you know someone who might? Have you got an idea for a way to raise some cash for storage cabinets or printing, or lamination? Do you have a group of friends who's just dying to come provide some training? If you are interested in helping and excited about the possibilities this new resource could be for our congregations, please contact me for more details.    coachandsheila@gmail.com

interns Amanda Rachel and Jamey help sort pictures

preachers selecting materials for their congregations

Fruit of the day: mystery fruit

The mystery fruit. Roughly a foot long, a slick smooth maroon skin. Slightly soft to the touch, and visibly rotting on one end. It smelled kind of sweet, and kind of rotten.

This has been a real puzzler. I found it in the garage, and couldn't get any worker to claim it or its origin. I carried it around the market, asking different vendor friends if they could identify it, all to a big fat nothing. It seems nobody had seen one before.

So I finally just busted it open for a taste, hoping that would help me narrow down my searching.

Inside was soft fruit flesh surrounding a central channel of wet seeds. It reminded me of cucumber, and the taste was slightly cucumber-ish too. Light and somehow cooling. Sweeter than a cucumber with more of a flowery taste.

In the whole wide internet, here is what I found:

Sicana odorifera- Family: Curcurbitaceae. Long vines with attract glossy green leaves. 2 inch bright yellow male flowers. Female flowers are a little smaller with a young fruit attached to the base; it develops if pollinated. Hard shelled fruits ripen to orange, red or black. Fruits are scented and have a melon-like flavor. Seeds are periodically available.       the source

Sicana odorifera, the only species of the genus Sicana, is a large, herbaceous perennial vine native to tropical South America, grown as an ornamental plant and for its sweet edible fruit. English names include cassabanana or casbanan, sikana, and musk cucumber. The fruit is large, up to 60 cm long, with skin of variable color. The fruit has a delicious, melon-like taste when it is ripe, which needs high temperatures to ripen. The sweet, aromatic, yellow-to-orange flesh of the mature fruit is eaten raw or made into preserves. The immature fruit can be cooked as a vegetable.     the source

this picture I didn't take, might explain why the end was kinda nasty

I've been meaning to write...

I have moved a bunch of times in my life. And moving around the country has left me with various relationships scattered around the map which it seemed I always maintained better right after a move. Something about moving has always brought back all the emotions of other "moves".  Moving to a new place always makes me think not only of the people I have just left--but all the places I have been before--and all those people--afresh.

Back in the olden days of handwritten letters in the mail box--it seemed I would begin every letter with some version of: "I'm sorry it's been so long, but I have been thinking of you often." or "I've really been meaning to write, but..."

I feel that way now, as I sit down to type. I really have been meaning to write. And I really have been thinking of friends and loved ones in all sorts of places that I used to be. Probably in no small part, because we just moved--but I just haven't been able to let my mind settle in one place long enough to know quite what to say. 

As I mentioned, moving always makes me reflect on other moves. There is a certain brand of nostalgia I associate with moving. I can't help but think of our last move: from Texas to Jinotega, and the drama, change, and growth that it produced. I spent some time looking back through this blog, and thinking about the physical process of packing up, and yard sale-ing, and all the trucks and boxes and work and the generosity of  people who helped. 

abundance     happening so fast     off hand remarks  

There is a phrase you hear a lot here when someone is thanking you, "Dios te lo pagará. God will repay you." I renew my thanks for all of you who helped during that crazy transition and who continue to make this strange new life possible for us. I never can, but God will repay you

I've moved a bunch of times. (more than 30 times, which feels like a bunch) With help, and all alone. But I have never, ever, ever moved in one day.

It was a Tuesday and we were standing with the agents from immigration in our living room, showing them that we in fact had an established household, and really did live here, every doo-dad on its shelf and decoration in place. 

Wednesday morning, I started packing our stuff. Do you see what I am saying? Started. Wednesday at lunch some guys from the mission helped us haul it to our new house. We were done by 2:30. Seriously. The very first thing got packed that morning, and we were all done in time for Jonathan to start building some furniture before it even got dark. That's crazy! And as much as I worry about the contrast between our high standard of living compared with our some of our brothers here, and as much as I bemoan all the stuff we keep accumulating and must manage, I was reminded what a blessing we have received in being liberated from the sheer amount of work that moving has been in the past. One day! Can you imagine?

/new kitchen, unpacked and ready to go. fresh lemons on the counter

no closets? no problem, Jonathan will just whip one up

The following Wednesday, we were throwing our first big house party. We asked all the church members, mission workers, and neighbors to join us for a giant pot of chili and a wash tub full of cabbage slaw. Our new house was blessed by at least 80 friends who came to celebrate with us.

Living in a neighborhood is opening my eyes to Nicaragua again. There are so many new sights and sounds that I feel in many ways like I did when I first moved here two years ago. Waking up to the sing-song call of the milk man pushing his cart down the street each morning, stepping out the door to pick some lemons for dinner, washing clothes in a bucket, and hanging them on the line in the evening while fruit bats circle overhead, listening to the guitar maker across the street tuning up, passing water through the window to thirsty kids running from school. Just a short walk away from the market center where we've been living, but it feels like a whole new country around us. 

Even working at the mission feels different, as I learn to manage time differently, and see new progress in projects that have quietly simmered on a back burner. I've had a much greater focus on time in the vision clinic, on teacher training, and on curricular resources--which has been re-energizing. 

Like each time I have moved, there is a sense of the bittersweet. The excitement of the new is not completely without the shadow of loss. Change of any kind can be disconcerting--and while this move is just across town-- it has coincided with some other difficult changes in the Church and its work. While we are physically in a time of evaluation, ("Where should we keep this frying pan? Do we need more towel hooks?") we as a family of believers in Jinotega are in a time of spiritual evaluation, ("Why did that happen? Is that a good or bad thing? What should our response be?") 

I don't know if moving affects you this way or not. I don't know if it makes you inexplicably pensive. I don't know if it makes you long for contact with old friends, or if mental movies of years past flash behind your eyes when you tape up boxes. I don't know if change in one area of life makes you feel more sensitive to changes that may be needed in other areas. I don't know what types of experiences make your eyes blink and look around as though you've never seen anything before. But that's kind of how it is for me. 

And if I had blue flowered stationary I would say; 

"I have been thinking of you, and I'm sorry that it's been so long, I really have been meaning to write."

A Tale of Two Plants

The last few weeks have felt so big to me.

There have been some measurable "accomplishments", some new experiences, and some deeper insights. There have been these long-waited for moments that I can only describe as a feeling of success--teacher trainings, routine and functional vision clinics, long range plans and projects finally "getting off the ground".

And then, in the midst of all this "progress"--today feels like a set-back. Today's little hurdle is for some reason, looming like an unscalable wall.

I wish I knew where to begin. I wish I knew which parts matter. I guess I'll just show you these plants.

Jonathan bought me these hydrangeas on our first wedding anniversary in Nicaragua. They are my favorite flower, ones I grew and carried in our wedding, and ones that in some places, cover the hillsides here. So in August of 2012, he got permission from our landlord for me to take over a small flowerbed inside the hallway that is in front of our apartment in the Mission. He took me to a hillside covered with blooming hydrangeas, and we bought a few of the healthiest plants.

That was, you might say, quite a while ago, and they look exactly the same.

Exactly.

They haven't died.
They haven't grown.
They've never bloomed.
They look the same almost 3 summers later, as they did when they were first planted there. How is that even possible?!? It seems they should, (in the words of perhaps the most over-quoted movie ever) "Either get busy living, or get busy dying."

I didn't actually take this picture. 

Every time I pass these perpetually static plants, I can't help but wonder--is this me? Am I, like these plants just holding on, just maintaining, and never blooming? Do I celebrate their endurance or curse their ineffectiveness?

Then there is the chaya.

Chaya is a common vegetable here--delicious, plentiful, and cheap. It grows on a vine and tastes kind of like a potatoe-y squash.

I didn't take this picture either. You can tell, since it's not blurry.

A chaya in my vegetable drawer was sprouting leaves so I decided to plant it. It went into the same partially lit patch of ground as my hydrangeas--but just one day later, had already sent up a runner almost a foot high.

For the next few weeks it was remarkable--you could literally watch it grow. Pass by at 6 in the morning and mark how high it stood on the wall, and by 8 you'd see another 3 or 4 inches. Just endless, rapid, unbelievable change.

Within a few months it had scaled not only the first floor, but had taken over the third floor as well! Even battling the ministrations of packs of pigeons and sparrows, it has survived and spread.

chaya vine, begins just behind hydrangea

chaya growing past first floor doorway

chaya level 2

chaya--reaches roof of garage area

But you know what? It has never flowered either.  It's never produced a chaya for my table, not even a blossom.

It makes me wonder, for all its vining and growing, is it any different than the homeostatic hydrangeas?

I know there is a lesson here for me.

Every single time I pass these plants I think: "Well, there is an object lesson just waiting to happen."
I have even sat down to write about these plants on more than one occasion, and read lots of verses about endurance, patience, perseverance, and spiritual maturity. And of course, that famous planter and his seeds.
(*insider tip: those tan words are the Bible verses, go click on 'em and read 'em.)

I wanted an easy to swallow lesson (meaning, something I didn't feel I was personally struggling with) that related to bearing fruit and growth, and that would leave me feeling wise and all spiritual-y without having to actually confront my own weakness.

I guess I need a better concordance--'cuz I never found those scriptures.

What I am left with, is that same old lesson again: that God's ways are not our ways.  When I look at these plants, I can't help but notice that while they may appear opposite--one growing so rapidly and profusely while the other remains unchanged year after year--what truly defines them is that neither is fruitful. And see, the thing about God is--that the fruits He tells us to look for in our lives, are not fruits that are easy to measure by human standards.

You know the ones:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
faith, righteousness, knowledge, self-control, patient endurance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love
(Galatians 5: 22-23  and  2 Peter 1:3-11)

It would be so much easier if "fruits" were the same as "accomplishments". Accomplishments would be such great fruits! I can see them, count them, take their picture, put them in a spreadsheet, analyze them, celebrate them, improve upon them, measure, record and report them.

Exactly all the things I can not do with the real fruits God points me toward.

And just like those plants: my outward appearance and actions have so little to do with how fruitful I am being.

I can rush around, busy with works, putting out vines and growing bundles of leaves--and be fruitless.
I can stay stuck in a mucky rut, persevering through trials, unmoved--and be fruitless.

The lesson I don't want to learn, that I see every time I pass these plants, is that God is not measuring the way we measure. He is not looking for the things we humans want to look for. His definition of "accomplishments" is not the same as the one we use among ourselves.

In fact, you can look it up: When the bible uses a word we translate "accomplish" it only, ever, always is talking about the action of God. Oh sure, I say out loud all the right words about how God is the one doing things and not me. But inside--it feels like, "Yep, today I really accomplished something." Or sometimes, "What a frustrating pile of obstacles today has been."

When in reality, I am just some days the plant whose leaves never change, and other days the plant with millions of leaves crawling up on the ceiling--but the fruit? Yeah. That's something different.

"...remain in me..."