Settling In - Monday, October 18th

Well, it's 7:15pm and it's already been dark for well over an hour now and here we are in our room finally writing our first blog from Nicaragua.


The drive with my mam and dad from Indianapolis to Chicago was pretty uneventful. We did get a little turned around because of a closed road, but no thanks to GPS, we found our way around it. I was hoping to have access to free WiFi in the airport but they make you buy it and I wasn’t about to do that. We had something to eat and waited for our flight. The flight to Miami was very uneventful so I have no funny stories to tell. Charley did lose his contact lens right out of his eye, but thanks to a little keychain light that I picked up free somewhere, we found it down in between our seats. A bit of contact lens solution and it was as good as new! Then we sat in Miami airport waiting for our flight to Managua and watching the football on TV. I had to write this part of the blog in Word because none of these airports have free WiFi. Grrrrrrrr.

We arrived on time to Managua airport and got in the most unorganized set of lines ever to get our passports stamped. Of course, I chose the line that wouldn't move - doesn't matter what country I'm in that always seems to happen to me. But eventually we got through and the Robleto family who we're staying with were waiting for us.

We hadn't eaten any dinner so we drove around in the dark looking for somewhere that was open. Easier said than done around here. We eventually went to a mall that had a big food court and got something to eat.

So, today was the first day that we started to see things in the light. The house the Robleto's live in is in the grounds of the Kingdom Hall. It's right on the PanAmerican Highway so huge, noisy semis drive by ALL the time. They woke us up during the night on various occasions, and then after about 5:30am people started honking too so that was the end of my night's sleep.

They haven't had any running water here for a while and today was no exception. So I washed my hair in cold water out of a bucket trying to save the water I was using in another smaller bucket. The water in the smaller bucket was later used to flush the toilet! It's amazing how you take running water for granted until you don't have it.

So, we had a lazy morning and a sister from the congregation came over and made breakfast. Her name is Griselda and she brought her daughter, Margarita, who is my new best friend. She's six years old and reads better than most 9 year olds! She's an absolute sweetheart. Then we all went to the market to buy food which was fun. I love open air markets.

Breakfast at Robleto's house

Just chillin' on the front porch

My new best friend, Margarita

We finally got home late afternoon and had some dinner and washed dishes and stuff. A brother was also over here all day helping Mario get the water fixed. And good news, we have running water.............for now. So it's time to take advantage of it and everyone is filling as many containers as they can find with water and filling the washing machine. I'm thinking maybe I'll take a shower while there's water still. It's a risk to wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow we'll be going out in service for the first time. I'm very excited. They meet at a brother's house at 8:30am so I hope I can get myself ready quickly enough. It's hard to get ready in a hurry when there's not much water and you haven't quite got the hang of getting ready somewhere new.

Well, that's it for today. Charley fell asleep at the foot of the bed already and Mario wants to show us some photos so we'll be signing off for now. I was going to upload a video but got an error message and I'm too tired to figure it out right now!