New house! Dog! Tons of pictures!

Many of you said we needed to show you pictures of our house and dog once we arrived and got settled in. Here they are! If you want to see any picture closer, just click on it.

First, the house.

From the front entrance

Inside the front door - living area

Kitchen at the back of the house

Bathroom

Bedroom

Bedroom - other side

Spare room, full of Liverpool and music

Back patio - Emre's home during the day

And now, we present to you: Emre.

He's a wonderful little Germand Shepherd. About six weeks old right now. Just took him for a checkup Saturday, and the vet says he looks great. We're having quite a bit of fun together.

He likes to play and sleep right now, and that's pretty much it. Here's his sleeping posture:

Lauren likes to cradle him like this:

 He doesn't always love it. Mitch likes to read with him like this:

Pup never knows what's going on in the story. Finally, here's the most recent picture. You can see he's growing. His ears are losing their floppiness and starting to stick up. He figured out how to escape from his patio today, so hopefully he'll continue on the path of intellectual excellence. Say hi to Emre, and if you ever want to meet him in person, you can just come on down to Managua!

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren

A day in the life...

Well, time keeps moving on. On Tuesday we will reach the three week mark, and today we thought we'd give you a little taste of what each day looks like now that we are settled into a regular routine.

Each morning we have language classes at VIVA Spanish school which start at 8:00. That means we have to leave our house at about 6:45 to walk to the bus stop. We squeeze onto a bus that takes us to a bigger bus stop. There we switch to a different bus which drops us off close to VIVA. We generally arrive at about 7:45 to enjoy some coffee and talk with other people at the school. It seems like we're making progress; 4 hours each day should be helping! Our teachers are fantastic, and the rest of the staff as well. We take lots of breaks, sometimes only having class for three of the four hours. We often feel like we don't need as many breaks, but there have been days already where we are grateful for them. In all honesty, keeping things relaxed will help greatly with avoiding burnout. Three months of language classes is a long time!

After class we have a few hours of free time. So far we've found different places to eat, met up with different people for lunch and other things, run errands to get groceries and other things for the house, and spent time at home. We've got quite a bit to do at home each day. We have homework from VIVA, and we have to prepare to teach English at CINAFE each afternoon. PLUS, we have Emre to hang out with! [More on him later.]

At 3:00 each afternoon, we go to CINAFE to teach English to the children there. It is getting better each day. The first few days were very difficult. We didn't know how much English they had learned, and our Spanish was barely sufficient to explain things. After that we added songs, games, and hopefully useful vocabulary, and it seems like things are moving along quite well. Below you can find a nice little video from Valeska, showing a little of what she's learned. No cue cards or anything!

After classes, we get to eat supper with the kids and staff. It's been special to connect with them so quickly. CINAFE is the reason that we decided to make this move to Nicaragua, and we have been blessed to have them take us in and allow us to practice our Spanish and build relationships with them. We've gone to church each Sunday with them, and even participated in birthday celebrations. They are a great group of people, and we are so thankful that God has placed them in our lives. [Here's a little video of a Nicaraguan birthday piñata. It's quite a fun time.]

And now our blog post is getting rather long. We'll save Emre and some pictures of our house for tomorrow. Stop by sometime this week if you want to see our sweet new house and our sweet new dog!

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren

Rain, thunder, and lightning

Yesterday we took the bus home from class. We had planned to go to the grocery store on our way home, but as we made our way home, the sky started to look rather dark. When we got off the bus, we decided to skip the shopping trip and get home before the rain started. It turns out that rainstorms in Managua don't begin slowly. We only have to walk 5 blocks from the bus stop to our house. That was plenty of time to become absolutely drenched. We got our backpacks under Mitch's rain jacket, but that's all that stayed dry.

We've never seen rain fall as hard as it did yesterday, save for the time Lauren nearly drove through a tornado in South Dakota. Other storms here have been that powerful, but we've been inside for those. The downpours are quite lovely from inside a sturdy house!

More amazing was the thunder and lightning. We've heard that you can count the time between thunder and lightning to see how close the storm is, and there were many flash-bangs that were too close together to even reach the number one. And the volume was unbelievable! Even though the lightning made it clear there would be a loud boom, Lauren found herself jumping multiple times. Never have we ever heard thunder that loud.

We are so grateful for the house we're able to rent, and for your financial support to do so, when we have storms like that. There are many in Managua who don't have adequate shelter for these storms, and in the last deluge, 5 people were killed when a barrio flooded. It's sobering to know that while we enjoy God's display of power, others are in dire situations. We want to say a big thank you for praying for our safety and for your financial support that enables us to live here safely. We are grateful for your support every day.

We'll try to give you another update this weekend about what we've been doing each day, along with pictures and videos. And for those who enjoy pictures and videos of puppies, we'll have those, too. Emre registers pretty high on the cuteness scale, so be prepared. Lauren was pretty taken by him before he was even in our house. Once again, a big THANK YOU to everyone who stands behind us while we live and work here in Managua.

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren

One week

We've been here for a week! It's pretty incredible to think back on all the things that have happened since we arrived. The thing that sticks out the most is how God has provided for us through the people we've met. Everyone has been helpful and gone out of their way to help us feel welcomed and familiar with the city.

But before recapping our adventures so far, for those of you who were wondering: the earthquake here in Nicaragua was far from Managua, and there was no damage in our area. Schools were closed because there were parts of Managua without power, but we had no disruptions in our area. In fact, we didn't even know there had been an earthquake until the next day!

When we woke up, we had a regular morning. Then, as we arrived at our Spanish school for classes, everyone was talking about the huge earthquake off the coast. [It registered as a 7.4, and parts of the coastal region were evacuated because of fears of a tsunami.] Everyone was sharing their story of their house rocking and swaying. Lauren and I looked at one another and felt completely out of the loop. Apparently we had slept through the entire earthquake! Everyone else was dumbfounded that we had not woken up.

When we got home, our landlady came by and asked where we had spent the night. We said we were at home, but she didn't believe us. She said she had pounded on our door and yelled our names because she wanted to make sure we were okay and nothing had fallen in the house. We must have been extremely tired from our first day of Spanish classes because nothing could rouse us!

Speaking of Spanish classes, we are about to start our third day at VIVA Spanish School. Our teachers are great, and we are enjoying the way things are set up. Right now we are reviewing many things we already know, but we're finding that there are many things we don't know thoroughly. We have 4 hours of classes each morning, so we have a good opportunity to correct any mistakes!

After class ends at noon, we take the bus home or to a restaurant or store because we have a little free time until 3:00. At 3:00 we go to CINAFE to teach English to the children and staff. Right now we have two groups, about 45 minutes each, and we are doing our best to figure out what they already know. We're excited to spend that time at CINAFE building relationship with the kids and the staff.

There are lots of other things that we've experienced so far, but we'll save some for a future post. Just wanted to let you know that we've started classes and that the earthquake didn't harm us!

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren

Emre - Our new guardpuppy

We thought you'd like to meet the newest soon-to-be-occupant of our house [or as Lauren would say 'member of our family.'] We chose him this afternoon, and we'll get to bring him home next week!

Arrival!

Hello everyone!

We are here safely in Managua and are enjoying every minute of it so far! We’ve been here for 3 days and it’s been fun to get settled in to our new house. We want to thank everyone for all of your prayers along the way; they’ve surely been felt by us. We are grateful for every one of you.

On Wednesday, our first full day here, Lois Orozco (a woman who we met back in March, originally from MI) took us out to shop for many different things we needed to get – food, household items, cell phones, etc. It was so nice to have someone we already knew take us around the city and show us places that will be helpful for us as we live here.

Yesterday, Thursday, we adventured out and took the bus through the city to find our school where we’ll begin taking Spanish classes. Once we got off the bus, it took us a little while to find the school but when we did, we set up our classes to begin this coming Monday!

Today, we’ve been spending more time setting up our house and, after waiting in line for an hour, we also got the bus cards we need for riding the city buses to and from school each day. We’ve also been enjoying the rain shower we’ve had for the past 2 hours J

Tomorrow, we don’t have much planned at all except to go meet our new puppy, Emre, who we’ll be bringing home, fingers crossed, next week!!!

Look for pictures to come soon!

Make it a great day,
Lauren & Mitch

Less than a week

We have less than a week left in the United States. Only one day left in Harrisonburg. Now is the time for being overwhelmed, stressed, scared, and anxious.

Strangely, those words don't describe us. Our brains know that others expect that from us, and frankly, we anticipated describing our thoughts and feelings that way. But, those feelings haven't made their way to the front of our consciousness. That's not to say we haven't thought them, but so far we feel calmer than you would expect.

Why? Because there is a blessed assurance in knowing that you are following God's will. In our minds, there is no doubt that we are taking this step because it is what God desires for us. He has shown us in many ways that He wants us in Managua. That knowledge can quiet any fear.

• "What about being in a country that speaks another language? You won't be able to communicate with people, so even the simplest task will be fraught with difficulty!"

• "What about trying to find a way to interact with children and staff at the orphanage you want to be a part of? Dropping in and forcing yourself into the daily life of an institution won't be easy!"

• "What about having only three months of preparation before beginning your school year? When January arrives, you'll have to teach and talk with co-workers IN SPANISH! You don't know very much; do you think you'll be ready in three short months?!?"

• "What about trying to find your way around the city? Managua is confusing, it doesn't use addresses or street names, and you don't speak the language of bus drivers or bus riders. How are you possibly going to find your way to language classes and back each day?"

• "You expect to feel safe there? You're going to stick out like a sore thumb. People say that no one should be out after dark, especially not white norteamericanos, and darkness falls around 6:00. All you can do safely is sit in your house; everything else will be more dangerous than you should risk."

Yes. Those are all legitimate fears. We can be completely paralyzed by all the bad things that might happen and all the hard things that will face us in the first few months. Or, we can have faith that God has called us to Managua with a purpose. A purpose that is worth striving toward.

A purpose that does not avoid the above fears. A purpose that embraces difficulty and hard work. There is no way to move to a foreign country without difficulty. We will have to work extremely hard to see progress. We will be overwhelmed, stressed, scared, and anxious, plus very tired, on a daily basis. At the same time, we know that God did not call us to Managua for a cakewalk.

God called us to Managua so that we could serve. BUT, He also called us so that we could learn. There is so much that we can gather from the people around us and from the hardship we face. If we go down there looking for ease and comfort, we are going to be sorely disappointed. For us who have lived nowhere else, nothing will be easy in a country that is not the United States. We know that, we embrace that, and we look forward to the benefits we will receive in the long run.

We write this now so we can look back in the hard times and remember this: "Even though this is difficult in the moment, we have chosen this path so God can work in us and through us. Hard work and struggle are not things to shy away from."

Pray that we will remember this when difficulties arise.

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren