Charley & Rachel in Nicaragua: What a welcome!

Our wonderful congregation put on a welcome party for us this past weekend. They had been waiting for the other couple to arrive to organize it. As it turned out it was a welcome for us and a goodbye of sorts for them since they're moving to the other congregation.

So, I knew they had some kind of performance arranged but it was way more extravagant that I had expected. They had live music and a ton of beautiful outfits and dances organized. Here is a video compilation of the dancing, and then there are a ton of photos below too. To the untrained eye (including mine) the dances all look about the same, but I guess each one is slightly different. It's called Marimba and it's traditional to Nicaragua.

I also taught them some Scottish dances which I don't have a video of unfortunately, and we taught them the Cha Cha Slide too! They love to dance so we danced the night away and had just a generally great time!

They made us sit in special chairs that looked a bit like thrones! Charley asked where his crown was! And while everyone else ate rice and bread, we were served a big plate of gallo pinto (beans and rice mixed together), tostones (fried green plantains), cabbage/carrot salad and big chunks of meat. I felt really guilty about eating that especially since everyone could see that we had something different! But that's just the love of the brothers down here. They're so very generous with the little that they have, and really wanted to show us their appreciation. It was a very moving display of love from our dear new friends.

Here are some pictures from the evening too.