Animal Delivery

We had an interesting day yesterday. In preparation for the group coming to see Steve's project on Monday, Steve has been pushing to get some worms and rabbits out to a few farms, to get his project going.

Last week, he traveled to Managua, and met up with a campesino (farmer) to buy some worms. Steve then delivered them to a farmer named Juancito (little John, so named because although he is an adult, he is tiny!). He bought them for $12 a kilo. As the worms reproduce, Steve plans on giving a certain amount to the beneficiaries of his project. If people want more worms or compost, then they will have to pay Juancito, which will be a nice little business for him.

Yesterday, we traveled down to Masaya (2.5 hours south of here, just south of Managua) and met up with a man who raises and sells rabbits. He raises several types of breeds, but the only one I recognized was Lop. After some discussion, Steve decided to buy 2 female rabbits, already bred and due the week of Feb. 4th, and two females who still need bred. He also bought a male to start the breeding process. We hadn't brought anything to transport them in, so the seller put them in burlap sacks. Unfortunately, the male became quite excited about being in the bag, and after only a half hour after leaving, the male died.

Today, Steve went out to deliver the rabbits, 2 females for 2 farmers. We've been looking around the last few weeks for rabbits a bit closer to home, but without luck. Hopefully we can find a male rabbit to start breeding the other females, without having to travel back to Masaya again.

Baby Shower

Yes, the above is actually a game, done for fun! Various concoctions of food is mixed and then smeared into a diaper...can you tell what it is? I couldn't get close enough to the diaper...too many years of changing the real thing!

We spent January 17th in Managua celebrating the imminent arrival of the Classen-Thrush baby with a grand baby shower. The arrival of the baby will mark the end of our solo reign as the ONLY family on the MCC Nicaraguan team. Now we will have other parents to laugh, compete and yes, commiserate with. Many of the attendees were neighbors of the couple, Alan and Beth, who live in Managua.

We enjoyed many riotous games, several of which I videotaped and will hopefully have posted in the near future. One game consisted of 2 women racing to put cloth diapers on 2 gigantic boys (aka men). Another game involved two women bottle-feeding their baby man, bottles filled with Coke. Drinking from a bottle is harder than it looks!


Our SALTer Matthew tries to feed his "baby" a jar of baby food, while blindfolded. They won!


The race to finish the bottle of coke...Beth gets some practice by feeding her husband, Alan

MesoAmerica Retreat

Whew! We are finally on the tail end of an extremely busy travel time for the first half of January. After we celebrated the New Year, we headed off to Managua on January 6th for a 4-day retreat with all the MCC volunteers in Central America (around 70 in all), called the MesoAmerica retreat. This retreat happens every 2 years and is hosted by a different Central American country each time. Nicaragua was responsible for the logistics, and the Mexico MCC team was responsible for the retreat sessions.

I (Colleen) was responsible for the Children's Programming, along with Issela (Nicaraguan who works in the MCC office in Managua). There were 12 children in all, ages 2-7. Overall, the children seemed to have a good time. I was only able to attend one of the sessions due to handling details of the program, but I was blessed to serve other parents in this capacity. We also enjoyed a few rare moments catching up with other MCCers with whom we had met in orientation. Unfortunately, my camera battery died after taking only 3 pictures, so the below is all I have to offer over 4 days.


(from L to R: Matthew, SALTer on our team, Issela, and David, Nicaraguan on our team who works with churches throughout Nicaragua)

(from L to R: unknown fellow MCCer, Greta and Rachelle, both SALTers on our team)

At the end, we were fairly exhausted, but were glad to see and hear what other MCCers are doing throughout Central America.

PEACE in Nicaragua

Please pray for Nicaragua. There has been escalating violence, mostly connected with peaceful protests against the government. Above was the front page of the paper last week. Peaceful marchers have been attacked by people of the government with machetes, knives, guns and morters. Every day the paper is covered with images of protesters being attacked, and the government supports these attacks! Thankfully, we have not seen any violence in our city, but please pray for peace in Nicaragua.