Nicaragua Day Five

Today, Tuesday, was our second day of the water project and VBS. As soon as we arrived this morning, our driver, Ervin, grabbed a shovel to clear the animal excrement from the street outside of the church so that none of us would step in it as we carried in our materials for the day. Ervin is such a humble servant and he never stops serving, even in the midst of his own exhaustion as he worries about his two hospitalized daughters. 

Yesterday Pastor Silvio had requested that the pastors from our group take turns leading the morning devotions so Brian led our thought for the day this morning. Actually, three of the pastors in the group were able to pray with the people today as Dave was asked to pray after lunch for the more than 20 local children who are currently hospitalized with dengue fever and Greg was able to close our afternoon session with the adults with prayers for the children and the many sick family members of our students. It is very humbling for our group to see Pastor Silvio's heart for the people and how much all this sickness is weighing on him. 

Then we were off for the tasks of the day. Greg assembled water filters with the people -- in the photo below you can see them filling a filtration bucket with well water. Dave continued his ministry of health interviews with another 7 families. Today he learned that in five of the seven homes a child had died, three of dengue fever. At the fourth house we visited, there were a total of 27 family members living in 5 small houses together and those 27 people only drank about 40 ounces of water daily. In spite of their living conditions, family members were rarely ill and the mother repeatedly gave God all the glory for the relative health of her family as Dave interviewed her, constantly referring to God as the Keeper of all. 

As we continued our work in the village today, we also had to deal with the fumigation trucks, the source of the white smoke in the photo below. The dengue fever is so widespread right now that trucks regularly come to the village to spray to kill the mosquito larvae. Workers go right into the homes to fumigate and even fumigated the school and church today while we were there. 

Here is most of our morning crew with one of the church members that received a filtration system:

Paul had Tippy Tap installation duties again this morning. Here his buddy Carlos and a cousin are using the Tippy Tap for Carlos to wash his hands:

The VBS Bible story for today was Jesus Walking on the Water.  The children took their chairs to the middle of the courtyard and sat inside a boat drawn in the dirt as Lisa acted out the story with our puppets:

To experience the wind in today’s Bible story the children played a blowing game with some straws and cotton balls.

The 40+ VBS students (many more than yesterday!) made boats to resemble the boat that Jesus and the disciples were on.  After assembling the boats they were able to pick and attach a Bible verse from one of the “Spanish Spiritual Vitamin Jars”.

One of the games for the day allowed some selected students to be the “germs” who were trying to get into the bodies of the other students:

Paula leading the children in some bubble fun:

Brian and Sam worked diligently through the morning heat to repair the skylight section of the Lutheran school building.  During the middle of the repair job, they had to deal with the entire school and church being fogged for mosquitos -- they were a little startled to see white smoke suddenly coming up through the skylight hole!

Our lunch break meant that Sam and Pastor Silvio could join in on an impromptu praise session with the conga drum and guitar that we borrowed this morning from the seminary:

After lunch we put many of our donated soaps (thanks to all you readers who gave!) into footies to give out in the afternoon class. Even though 20 adults and 20 children attended today, we still were able to give out 60 bars of soap and have many more left over for the church to distribute. 

Kara spent part of her lunch break wrapping water filtration gaskets with Teflon tape. Yesterday Pastor Silvio let us know that some of the filters installed last year have failed due to dry rot in the gaskets, so Brian came up with this method to prevent the problem repeating itself after our departure. 

We also spent part of our lunch break making play dough animals together:

Lisa and Julie were already deep in plans for tomorrow's VBS session:

And Sister Aurelia (as all call her) was deep in the Word and prayer:

Paula introduced us to her turtle, Linda Renata. You can also see that the children quickly developed the habit of using the Tippy Tap:

Greg and I (Diana) explained the water filtration process and materials in the   afternoon adult health and hygiene session.  We also had some fun and        challenges with the detailed facts and vocabulary with today’s material:

Prayers were lifted up both at lunch time and at the end of the afternoon session regarding the many children and individuals who are very sick with dengue fever:

As you finish reading this lengthy post (again!), we hope you will join us in praying for the many here who are so ill. We also want to thank God that those on the team who have been feeling poorly are improving.