You might not like this story!

Remember last time I said I thought I had an entertaining story to tell but couldn't remember what it was?!

Well, I remembered. Although I'm not sure if entertaining is quite the right word!

First, I'll briefly tell the story of the ants in my hairdryer. I think I might have blogged about it at the time since it was a few years ago now. I hadn't used my hairdryer in quite a while, since it's hot here and I have short hair, but for some reason one day I decided I needed to use it. Well, some big ants had apparently made themselves quite at home in it and they all came flying out into my hair when I turned it on! You can imagine the rest of the story! Lets just say its a good job nobody else was home and Charley just sat and laughed his head off through the whole ordeal!

So, my hairdryer has been stored in a different spot since then and again hasn't been used much. So I was going to use it a month or so ago and when I looked in it, just in case there were ants, I got an unexpected surprise! Little, round, white things. On closer inspection I realized they were little gecko eggs! I know this because we've had them in other random places in our house and then seen tiny geckos running around. So I didn't use my hairdryer.

Well, the other day I decided I'd use it and I tried to shake the eggs out, figuring they were old and just empty shells. Bits of shell fell out, and then, all of a sudden what I thought was a worm came flying out. I thought, man, worms too?! But then I realized it was a gecko not quite ready to hatch yet. It was still moving though. I couldn't bring myself to use my hairdryer after that!

So, like I said, not so much entertaining as plain old disgusting and perhaps even traumatic for my dear readers! Just one of the things that you get used to when you live in a tropical country. It seems there is always some small insect or animal ready to move into your appliances if you don't use them for a while (like our iron but that's a story for another day!).

Can you see the two eggs at the top? Not a very clear picture but you get the idea!

On a more positive note we also get to enjoy lots of beautiful creation outside our house instead of inside our appliances! I will leave you with pictures I took last week of a couple of birds that are always around here!

Tropical kingbird

Great Kiskadee

And just in case that wasn't enough to help you recover from the trauma of my story surely our congregation's favorite baby, Abdias, will at least make you smile and forget about the gecko for a few seconds!

I have a hard time concentrating on the meeting when he is around!

Watching it grow

Well it turns out that quite a few are still subscribed to the blog and happily received a post after that two year break! 

This past week was a really hectic one. Monday is always a busy day in the kitchen at the Educational Center. Tuesday we took the third and final class picture for the Elders School that was held in Masaya. It moves on to Managua now, and to a local photographer there! It was lovely to be a part of the schools that way, but I'm glad we don't have to travel outside of Masaya to take pictures!! Wednesday was a long service day, mostly studies. Thursday we went to Charley's parents new place for the day and helped clean and paint. Amazing what a difference a couple of coats of nice paint can make to a place! Friday we went to pre-assembly cleaning in the morning, and were assigned to clean where the buses park so got a good dose of sun!! Then we got the witnessing cart out for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I was supposed to have two studies after that too, but they both cancelled, and honestly I didn't complain since we still had to go shopping for our assembly lunch!

Katie (my mother-in-law) and I supervising Charley's painting!

Cleaning the bus parking area at our assembly hall

Most of the crew from our congregation

Beautiful clouds across from our witnessing cart spot

Saturday was a lovely assembly, with branch rep. The theme of loving Jehovah with your whole heart was very encouraging and as always left us a lot to work on. It was also such a joy to see 10 new ones baptized, including my dear Laynori. I studied with her when we first moved here, and now, 7 years later, she's 14, her mom is back in the truth, and she's taken her own stand and dedicated her life to Jehovah. I could barely hold back the tears when she came to tell me Saturday morning. 

It really is such a joy to play a small part in people's journey towards baptism. Although it was a long time ago, and she's had lots of help from her family all along, there's always a special place in your heart for these young ones who you've watched grow and progress. Getting to stay in the same area as we've served here these seven years has been such a treat, because although we've changed congregations, we are still close enough to see those who we've had the privilege of studying with, or grown close to, make progress. 

Laynori and I at convention in September 2012

My dear Laynori the morning before her baptism September 2019
(I didn't try to pick her up this time!)

With her friends and family

One of my current little students

Quite a few young ones from our first congregation had Watchtower comments.

They weren't even teenagers when we first moved here

And we remember her kindergarten graduation party!

Sunday morning we got to help do some landscaping at our Kingdom Hall, since we didn't have meeting that day. It's amazing how much fun you can have with a machete and a pair of garden shears!!! And thankfully it was cloudy so working outside was pretty pleasant. 

In the afternoon we headed to where my in-laws live and had lunch with them and the couple who we came to visit on our first ever trip to Nicaragua. There is still some work to do around the house Charley's mam and dad have moved in to, but they're slowly getting there. They have a rooster nearby with a rather unique voice but after you've lived here a while all such sounds at 3am don't even wake you up anymore!!

Well, that was more like a journal entry than a blog post wasn't it?! Not quite as interesting as I would have liked it to be! But I enjoy writing, so even if you got bored after the first paragraph, I enjoyed reminiscing over a busy but satisfying week!

It seems like during the week I thought of something entertaining to tell you all about but I can't seem to remember what it was!

I'm supposed to be out doing studies but its raining with thunder and lightening so I'm hoping maybe in a bit it will calm down enough to make it out!

How on earth did two years go by?!

Someone recently reminded me that I have a blog! I thought to myself, "it's probably been about a year since I've written anything, maybe it's time to get back to it."

Turns out its been just a month short of two years since my last post!! Obviously I'm not about to try and sum up all that's happened over the last two years but I thought maybe I'd try to get back into the habit of blogging. I've always enjoyed writing. Probably everyone that used to read the blog has long since given up on it, but even if its just for the fun of writing and looking back on it myself, I thought I'd give it a try!

Charley and I are still serving in Masaya, Nicaragua. Still in the same house and same congregation as when I last blogged a couple of years ago. One very exciting new thing that has happened just over three months ago is that Charley's parents sold up and moved down here! They are living about 40 minutes away from us and working really hard to get settled into a Spanish congregation. They came for three months at the end of last year and were with an English congregation. But since both of the what are now English groups are in the hottest parts of Nicaragua they decided to give Spanish a try! It's so nice to have them close by and we are really proud of them taking such a big leap!

The other massively exciting news is that Managua (capital of Nicaragua) will be hosting a special convention in January 2021. You can read all about it on www.jwevent.org and many of you may already have heard an invitation read out. The UK is invited so I'm really hoping someone we know from England might get to come. And just four states in the US. They will be needing thousands of volunteers and all the English-speakers they can get their hands on to take care of the delegates so we're hoping we'll get to have some kind of part in it all. We don't know yet if our congregation will actually be assigned to the convention but even if we aren't there'll be plenty of activity to be a part of!

Our educational center here has evolved and grown since last time I blogged. The Nicaraguan Sign Language RTO has now relocated back to the educational center (former Nicaragua branch facilities) and for the first time there are 3 SKE classes this year. Previously there has only been one a year, or CO schools. So currently the second SKE is underway and lots of fun and sweating is to be had in the kitchen cooking for the students! It is also the hub of the hospitality committee for the Special Convention so there are even more people on site than ever before!

Going back to Pioneer School was another highlight of this year. And we've had fun taking class pictures for PSS and for Elders School which is currently going on here in Masaya. 

Oh and last but not least we finally got THE REVISED BIBLE in Spanish!!!! We even have the print ones now which from what I understand haven't arrived to Spanish congregations in the US yet. Everyone is thrilled to be using it and we've seen an immediate difference in the ministry. Scriptures that we used to have to explain or define words in, now the householder or Bible student understands them immediately. There have even been some verses that I feel like I understand better in this Bible than in the revised English one! What a joy it is to have a modern, reliable translation of the Bible. And it's beautiful in appearance too!

I will leave you with a few pictures. Hopefully this won't be the last blog post for two years!

Can you spot the youngest member of the class? She was there all day, every day!

Our CO, his wife, and the two elders school instructors wives spent the week with our congregation in the ministry. This is just a handful of the big groups we had out every day.

The day the Bibles arrived!

Abdias was particularly happy!

With Charley's parents doing their first visa run.

4 of the 5 Monday Educational Center kitchen crew!