Charley & Rachel in Nicaragua: 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.