Day 3

Hello all!
We are still safe and sound down here in Nicaragua--sweating our brains out, but doing well. It seems that we are covered in a constant sheen of sweat. But oh well. All that we have to shower in is cold water--which IS NOT A BAD THING! For once I am very grateful for it!

Yesterday we went and visited a volcano--Volcan Masaya. It is an active volcano that spits out stuff from time to time. The last major eruption was back in April 2001. There was a strong sulfuric smell around the area and great clouds of smoke billowed out of the volcano. It was pretty neat and we took a lot of pictures. Although Jess and I put a lot of sunscreen on and even carried it with us, we both got burned a bit. We weren't even outside for over an hour--the sun is really strong here though and we've probably already sweated five pounds off.

There is a night tour of the volcano that you can do for about $10 that I think we are going to try and do when our friend Tara comes up. You get to walk around the lip of the volcano and go into this bat cave and just explore a lot more. I think it would be a really great experience and we are going to try to do it.

Rodney is wanting to make a small video of our time while we are here in Nicaragua to bring back with us to the states and we tried doing the interview at the volcano but the park rangers got upset saying that we needed to get a permit because they thought it was a commercial thing. We finally got it all worked out, but it was really windy and so we ended up not doing it.

The food has been pretty good here. It's very similar to what I had while I was in Costa Rica. One dish that is typically is gallo pinto. I really enjoyed it while in Costa Rica and it's here too! And it's one of those dishes that accompanies every meal. It ends up breaking down and being a complex protein and the funny thing is that they probably don't even realize how good it is for them.

We hung out with Rodney's wife, Gio, last night while he was out meeting with some people and we really enjoyed ourselves. She is an incredibly lady and is very patient with our fumbling Spanish.

Tomorrow we head up to Jinotega, and Jess and I are pretty excited about finally getting to the place that we will be ministrying. We're ready to hit the ground running. Jinotega is supposed to be a whole lot cooler than Managua, so we'll see! Hopefully once we get up there we will have a more stable internet connection, and so if you guys want to e-mail one of us about anything we'll get it sooner, and we also both have skype and g-mail, so if you are interested in maybe talking to us in that way, let us know. This next week will probably be about settling in and getting to know the city of Jinotega and start making the contacts that we'll need. Rodney is going to be keeping an eye on us and coming up every so often to check up on us.

Rodney took us and introduced us to an organization called Wisconsin Nicaragua Partners. They are a company out of Wisconsin that has been doing work down here in Nicaragua for around 42 years I believe. They work a lot with the firefighters and other organizations. Jess and I have been able to meet up and learn about a lot of different organizations while starting this trip: Wisconsin Nicaragua Partners, ERSLA, Hope Clinic...and many others. We are excited about learning about other organizations and maybe trying to work with them as well.

Victory for yesterday: Finally starting to settle in and feel comfortable once again with Spanish
Priorties: Getting in touch with Miguel so that we can set up a time for him to come down here and get us tomorrow
Stuck: I'm not really stuck on anything right now.
Prayer requests: for our continued safety and that we remember to put more sunscreen on!

Thank you all for your interest in our trip and I feel truely blessed to know that all of you back home are thinking of us and praying for us. I love you all and I will write more later!

~C