YAMEN Orientation / Orientación de YAMEN 2016 Nicaragua

(Español abajo)

People in the U.S. and Canada connected with MCC have a good sense of the going and coming between North America and the countries where MCC has a presence. Less obvious to the residents of the U.S. and Canada might be the exchanges that happen outside of that two-way street, one example being the YAMEN program (Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network), which is partnership between Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite World Conference.  The cycle for the service year follows the same calendar as the two other young adult service year programs that MCC runs, SALT and IVEP.  While SALT and IVEP now share an orientation in Akron, Pennsylvania, YAMEN has an Orientation in English, which was held this year in Thailand, and one in Spanish/Portuguese, which we were happy to host this year in Nicaragua.

We were glad to welcome 8 YAMEN participants, coming from Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Bolivia, and Mozambique (and a Brazilian interpreter who is currently working with MCC in Colombia), who will be traveling to serve in Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Exciting times! We wish them God's blessing in their year ahead.

---

Las personas en los EE.UU. y Canadá que están conectados con el CCM entienden bien el ritmo de la salida y entrada entre Nórteamerica y los paises donde el CCM tiene una presencia. Lo que no es tan obvio para los residentes de los EE.UU. y Canadá puede ser el intercambio que pasa a fuera de esta calle de dos vías, un ejemplo siendo el programa de YAMEN (por sus siglas en inglés, Red de Intercambio de Jóvenes Anabautistas Menonitas), que es una colaboración entre el CCM y el Congreso Mundial Menonita. El ciclo para este año de servicio sigue el mismo calendario que usa los otros dos programas de servicio para jóvenes que coordina el CCM, SALT y IVEP.  Mientras que SALT y IVEP ahora comparten una orientación en Akron, Pennsylvania, YAMEN tiene una orientación en íngles, realizada esta año en Tailandia, y una en español/portugués, de la cual  estabamos muy contentos para dar la bienvenida aquí.

Estabamos contentos para recibir 8 participantes de YAMEN, llegando de Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Bolivia, y Mozambique (y una interprete Brasileña que está trabajando acutalmente con el CCM en Colombia), que estarán viajando para servir en Camboya, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, El Salvador, y Nicaragua. Un tiempo emocionante! Les deseamos la bendición de Dios en el año que viene.

The YAMEN Spanish/Portuguese Orientation group 2016 /
El grupo de Orientación de YAMEN en español/portugués de 2016

Very interesting session with Andrew /
Sesión muy interesante con Andrés

Photo credit/Creditó de la foto: Laurey

Another, possibly less interesting session with Derrick /
Otra, posiblemente menos interesante sesión con Derrick

Photo credit/Creditó de la foto: Laurey

Last day of Orientation at Laguna de Apoyo /
Última día de la Orientación en la Laguna de Apoyo

Photo credit/Creditó de la foto: Jhon

New member of the MCC Nicaragua team, Jhon from Choco, Colombia /
Nuevo miembro del equipo del CCM Nicaragua, Jhon de Choco, Colombia

A month later - good memories from Michael, Rachael and the kids' visit

After Michael and Rachael left we had hit the ground running, starting off with a supporting role in a Brethren in Christ Canada Learning Tour, and then preparing for the arrival of a new family coming to join MCC N&CR.  So here I am, over a month later, with these pictures, half of which were taken and already shared online by Michael and Rachael.  We do what we can.  

Cousins playing together after a year apart

Looking for a cool escape from Managua, we headed toward a favorite destination: Selva Negra, Matagalpa. This time at Cabaña Gretel.

Opposite view of the window in the previous picture.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a child to imagine a fish and who knows what they'll do.

Memory with Aunt Rachael.

Hitting the trails. All photo credits from this one on down go to Michael and Rachael and their phone.

On the colorful stairs at the Feria.

Some downtime with Netflix.  Love Meredith's smile in this one.

The group picture from the trip, kids sitting on the pedestal (which appears to have lost a plaque or something) in the middle of the nearby park. We were so glad to have had these days together and look forward to visiting again, next time in the U.S., in a few weeks!

Celebrating 10 years!

For anyone who missed MCC's telling of this story, here's the link: http://mcc.org/stories/mcc-love-story

Thanks, MCC, for helping us celebrate! August 5 was a fantastic day in 2006 and fantastic day in 2016.

Parent, child, traveller, host

Over the last few weeks we have had the great privilege of welcoming my brother Michael and sister-in-law Rachael and their two kids, my nephew Caleb and niece Meredith. Our kids were on top of the world (sometimes a bit out of this world) with the chance to play together with their younger cousins again.  It was really interesting to see how these four children have grown in the last year, and see how they interact in new ways.  Active and creative play with Caleb. Curious and caring play with Meredith, who's now a year old.

In the last week we had the great privilege of welcoming a family into our MCC team in Managua, Darrin and Julie, and their three children.  I'm noticing Lia and Silas again on top of the world to be with these new friends, who are a little older than they are.  It's been interesting to observe the new children on the team as well, each processing the new setting in their own way.

Watching these children in these last weeks has made me think again about what children can teach us.  Jesus says we need to become as children to find the kingdom of heaven.  Something that kids do better than anyone is imagine and play.  It's been a long time since I've picked up a few inanimate objects to spin some story for personal entertainment.  But this is part of how kids process things.  Poor Silas is terrified of the fumigators who come through the neighborhood to smoke out the mosquitoes.  But not long ago I saw him playing with an astronaut Lego man, pretending that the astronaut's equipment was some fumigation equipment as the little man made his way through the Lego house.  I'm also impressed by how quickly kids can (not always) adapt within new settings. Last school year Lia and Silas settled into multiple childcare/school settings each time picking up on the routines, learning to read people of different ages and languages in each setting.

Somehow we carry the assumption that we will offer our children a solid foundation that supports them as they grow.  Roots and wings, some say.  When living and adapting in a new cultural setting it becomes obvious to us, and to the kids, that we are figuring this out as we go.  I suppose that is true for parenting even when everyone is in their "home culture." Regardless, everyone parenting really gets just one swing at this opportunity. We are hardly a solid foundation. We are just as vulnerable as our children, but we aren't as quick as children are to re-imagine our world and adapt within it.  In order to understand ourselves, those around us, and find/receive the kingdom of heaven, we need to become as children.

In this last week we have felt uncomfortable as the cases of Zika feel closer. The numbers of cases in the news tick upwards and we now know a handful of people personally who have had it. Rebekah is now well into her second trimester, which according to many sources is much less risky, but there is still plenty of unknown.  We continue to take all obvious precautions, but there is still a frustratingly mysterious side to this:  mosquitoes bite through clothes (even when soaked in permethrin), the asymptomatic cases, and limited availability of testing and limited confirmed science around what anyone would actually do if they had a positive test.  Anyhow, when we feel vulnerable, it seems easy to lose our creativity, our imagination, our ability to be flexible and adapt.

We find ourselves on all sides of these relationships we inhabit.  Sometimes we feel like the parent, the host, the teacher, the leader.  Other times we are the child, the guest, the learner, the follower.  Mostly it's all mixed up.

I wrote a song about this several months ago. It seems to take slightly different meaning for me at different moments.  I'll share it here.

Grace and peace to you and yours, whoever, wherever you might be.

June, in review: Changes on the way

June has been quiet here on the blog, but no less eventful.  Here's why:

We are excited to welcome (somewhere around January 4, some 27 weeks from now) a third child into our family!  It will be a long advent season. (Rebekah is already listening to Christmas music, no kidding.) Lia and Silas seem happy about the news as well.  Several weeks back Silas had told Rebekah that he is no longer a baby; "You should get another one."  Lia has a few classmates also expecting baby siblings, which adds some interest to the waiting.

This has involved some adjustments as well.  Rebekah can speak for herself about a challenging first trimester, which has also had the added anxiety with concerns around Zika throughout the Americas. There are still relatively few cases in Nicaragua at this point, but we've still be taking lots of precautions, which has been a bit stressful (and hot, for Rebekah).

So one change we had to make was that we decided together with other MCC regional staff that Rebekah and the kids would stay in Managua while I would travel to San Pedro Sula, Honduras for the annual MCC Latin America/Carribbean Representatives meetings (avoiding travel, and the high incidence of Zika in Honduras).  It was a great week, and it was also tough (but for the best) to leave the family behind.  Most of the week's sessions were at a retreat center off beautiful Lake Yojoa.  Later in the week we had the chance to visit some of MCC Honduras's partners, which was also a helpful learning opportunity.

A few days after returning from Honduras we celebrated the end of Lia and Silas's school year, which has been quite a year.  Last year at this time Lia and Silas were wrapping up part-time day care at Roberta Webb Child Care Center (and some childcare with the kids' wonderful babysitter Jeanne).  From there, we had packed up the house and camped out in Pennsylvania (generally), and then the kids had Children's Orientation in Akron (which was like an awesome preschool with near-daily field trips).  Landing in Managua, the kids were at Preescolar Globitos until the end of their academic calendar in late November. At that point we thought the better long-term option would be NCA International, which has turned out to be really helpful for our kids (and us) on various levels.

So Lia finished up Kindergarten (in some ways, for the second time, but more completely this time), with lots of well-earned pomp and circumstance.  Silas will continue with his mornings in PreK2 in the coming school year.  He was a little baffled by why Lia and her class were getting so much attention. Hadn't he been through just as much? We went to the mall to get them each a toy. Very proud of these guys.

Lia with her class notebook.

Silas, a bit uncomfortable with this picture.

Recognizing each students.  The slide reads, "Lia: Model student, Loves to learn, Very adaptable, enjoys every new experience and each new friend she makes." Like I said, we're very proud of her.

Another change or adjustment this month came on the way back from Honduras.  This is a long story, but essentially I learned that there were three interpretations going on with my immigration/residency process.  Our lawyer and I understood that when my courtesy visa was canceled, the process slip we were given was effectively the temporary visa.  The folks at the Nicaragua/Honduras border assumed that once the courtesy visa was canceled, the default amount of time was 90 days with the Central America-4 region (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua), which had expired. The third interpretation was that once the courtesy visa was cancelled, there was 30 days to renew, which wasn't communicated clearly to us, so we didn't do.  So coming back into Honduras they gave me 5 days to check with immigration to see if my residency documents were ready, and if not, to exit the CA-4 region into Costa Rica for 72 hours and re-enter for a new 90 days. 

After looking into our options, which were relatively few, we decided to go as a family and try to make the most of it.  Find a pool, a room with internet and A/C, and get a renewed stamp on the re-entry.  We went down to Liberia, a small city, which took about 5 hours with some slow border crossing.  But the kids had a pool, we had a room with internet and A/C, and I got the renewed stamp on my passport. Hooray.

This is what we call a payphone.

One more picture and short story.  A week later I had the chance to participate in a food security/agriculture exchange hosted by World Renew and Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes (ACJ), which is YMCA here.  They have several farmer field schools around Santa Lucía, Boaco, and this was an inspiring (and sobering) look at the efforts, innovation, and really hard work of these ambitious, young, small-scale farmers in the face of challenging terrain and soil, little-accessible water sources, and prolonged drought.  The rainy season has begun, but rain does not fall evenly everywhere and it will take a long time and careful water and soil management to overcome the drought.

On the way back into Santa Lucía that evening, after the day in the countryside, Mark VanderWees of World Renew threw out the idea of a sunrise hike up Peña Labrada before breakfast. By suppertime we had a group of around 10 who were in, and some one picked up some flashlights and we made a contact with a local guide to lead the way.  We started out at 4:00 the next morning in darkness and reached an impressive view at the top about 2 hours later.  Breakfast was later than it was scheduled, but it was certainly worth it for the view and the social time.  My camera battery was dead, so I'll be trying to get some pictures from others.  Here's one from Denise VanWissen that I've lifted from Facebook (Thanks, Denise!). 

Last week was a little more sane, working from the office again. Next week looks to be similar. Who knows what else is ahead...

Field Trip Day

On Friday I (Derrick) had the chance to go along with Silas on his PreK1 class field trip to the zoo.  It turned out that the same day Lia's Kindergarten class had a field trip to the museum at the Palacio Nacional. Here's what she reports:

"First we went to the museum and went to some rooms in it. We saw clay models. After we saw some stuff we got in the cars and went to the Parque Luis Alfonso. Then we got back in the cars because they were fumigating and went to Pizza Hut and we had pizza there and played and we also got to have Pepsi and then we went back to the class to go home. My favorite part of the day was going on the field trip."

Here are some pictures from the zoo trip with Silas.

Silas, happy to find a turkey by the path in the zoo. 

Some baby crocodiles and lizards.

The butterfly garden was a highlight of the zoo visit.

The attempt at a class picture. (Multiple people trying to organize this, I stayed in the background and tried not to add to the confusion.) 

And wrapping up the field trip at the big McDonald's along Carretera Masaya. For me, this was also a nice chance to visit more with some of the parents. A fine first field trip experience; I'm looking forward to many more.

To Bluefields, by land and river

Andrew and I took a pair of days for an out-and-back trip to Bluefields for a mix of reasons: some groundwork for an upcoming learning tour, visiting a Mennonite church (Convention) to share about MCC work and youth service opportunities, and visit MCC's partner Acción Médica Cristiana in Bluefields.  This was my first time out this direction (Rebekah's been out twice already) and our first time to travel by land, which also means traveling by river, for the last 1.5 hours of the trip.  There have been some roads in process relatively recently, which, when fully completed will make the east coast significantly more accessible to the rest of the country.

We began with a drive out to the town of El Rama, where the road ends.  We met Abel, youth pastor of the church we were visiting, who took us around town and told about some of their churches social project, including support for the local Maternity House (Casa Materna) and the local prisoners, and reforestation initiatives.

Where the Rio Siquia feeds into Rio Escondido.

Crossing the suspension bridge over the Rio Siquia to get to INATEC, the tech institute that has a nursery where seedlings are made available for reforestation efforts.

This young guy belted it out to lead the music at the church. We appreciated hearing Pastor Miguel's long history with the church and MCC's involvement in the area.


Next morning at 6:00 we got on the first boat to head towards Bluefields. This is regional transportation.

We arrive in Bluefields.  With Saúl outside the AMC office in Barrio Nueva York.

The central park in Bluefields.  The momument recognizes six ethnicities of the region: Miskito, Rama, Kriole, Mestizo, Mayagna/Suma, and Garifuna.

This was a land of pirates and Rey Mosco.

Most of the old wooden structures were taken out by Hurricane Joan in 1988.

The Moravians set up strong schools and churches many years ago.

Fish, turtles, etc.

Back to the pier, we start the long journey back to Managua. So long for now, Caribbean.