Help Manna win $1 milllion!!!

I have some very exciting news to share! Two year ago, Manna Project participated in the Chase Community Giving competition, and won $25,000. This year, we’ve been invited to participate again, and we have the chance to win up to $1 million!! We are extremely grateful for the chance to compete, and excited about all the ways that the money could help the communities we work with in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Guatemala. Here in Nicaragua, the money would allow us to provide more financial support to the clinic in La Chureca, more microfinance loans to start-up businesses in Cedro Galan, and much more.

We need your help to win! Do you have a Facebook account? The competition takes place on Facebook, and voting starts today and goes for a week – can you take 30 seconds to help us? All you have to do is go to this link and cast a vote for Manna Project under the "youth developers" tab. If you have 30 more seconds to spare, can you help us even more and send this information to your contacts to encourage them to vote, as well?

Thank you again for all your support of my work here in Nicaragua and of Manna Project in general. I am incredibly appreciative, and feel blessed to have the opportunity to be here in Nicaragua for the year. I truly believe in the work Manna Project is doing here, and am excited about the additional possibilities we would have with this additional funding. Thanks for your vote, and please ask your friends to vote too! Let me know if you have any questions.

So close, but so far

First of all, I owe you all an apology for not posting in over two weeks. It's amazing how quickly I get busy here, and I am starting to make a better effort to schedule my time better - let's hope this leads to more blog posts and quicker e-mail response times!

A lot has happened in the past two weeks, and I may double up on blog entries this weekend to catch you all up, but the biggest occurence in my life was a 4.5 day trip back to Houston last week! For those of you who don't know, one of the major things I did during my two years in Houston was help run the high school youth ministry program at my church, which consisted of general high school youth ministry and Confirmation preparation. Even before getting to Nicaragua, I had decided that I was going to fly home to be there for my kids' Confirmation, which was September 17. As luck would have it, the 14th-16th of September is a big Nicaraguan holiday, so I was able to fly home on Wednesday and not miss any days of work here! It was an extra blessing to have a few more days to spend with friends and family in Houston.

I won't lie - I was VERY ready for a short break and some time away from the ins and outs of daily life here. The break was well-timed, I think - I had been in Nicaragua long enough to be settled and feel at home here, and I was ready for a few days away from rice and beans, cold showers with no shower heads, and communal living. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE life here, and most days don't mind any of the things I just listed, but a break was good for my sanity.

The flight from Managua to Houston is a direct, 3 hour flight - a fact that many people were very surprised by. It's no longer than it was for me to fly from Houston home to see my parents in Michigan. In some ways, I am so close to Houston and to the USA - after all, I can leave Managua in the early morning and be in Houston by noon. I can get on a computer and chat with or e-mail a friend in the USA at almost any time I want (as long as the internet is cooperating), and I can pick up my phone and call someone in the US whenever. I can get on Facebook and feel fairly caught up on people lives via posts and pictures, or read other friend's blogs and know what's going on with them. The world is so connected that, in many ways, I'm always so close.

Once I arrived in Houston, though, it was also clear that my life in Nicaragua is so far from my life in Houston. In some ways, the fact that it's a quick three hour flight made it more difficult emotionally to deal with the fact that I had literally gone from a dump to a fairly upper-class Houston suburb within 24 hours. The first day or so that I was home, I was overwhelmed by almost everything around me, whether it be people or material things or infrastructure. It was a very interesting feeling to feel like I was "back home" in many ways, but also to recognize that Houston isn't my home for this year, and isn't supposed to be my home for this year - day-to-day life there is so far from day-to-day life for me right now. I struggled to put my thoughts and feelings into words, even with the people I'm closest to, which was probably equally frustrating for me and for them.

I stopped feeling as overwhelmed once I has been home for a day or two (and had gotten some more sleep), and the visit turned out to be a huge blessing for me. It was amazing to have a chance to reconnect with friends who I had only talked to via internet and a tiny bit on the phone for two months - even when I was struggling to express myself in words, there's something about being in the same place as someone which transcends words. I also did have some great conversations, and I was challenged in different ways than I am usually am here in Nicaragua. Daily life here challenges me in ways that I'm definitely not challenged in the USA, but I hadn't been challenged spiritually by anyone in quite a while. It's definitely been a transition for me to go from a super strong Catholic community in Houston to not having that community around here, and the lack of community makes it much easier to get sloppy about prayer and spiritual life in general. I had the chance to go to a newly formed women's group with friends, a prayer brunch, and daily mass. Having a few days to recharge and refocus was definitely beneficial to me, and I've implemented some changes in what my prayer life looks like here to help keep that momentum going. In doing that, I've made some other changes as well - scheduling in more time for myself, whether it be to read a book or just hang out with a housemate; playing my guitar more; sleeping 8 hours a night. Even just in this first week of my new "schedule", I've seen the difference it has made for my happiness and energy level.

I am happily back in Nicaragua after my short trip home, and coming back here felt like home as well. I am where I'm meant to be - I see that more clearly now after my trip home than I did before. And where I'm meant to be, though it may sometimes seem so far, can also be so close - the trick is finding the balance between the two.

Things that made me smile this week

One thing that I am loving about life here is that, even though I have a routine, it's much more varied that my 7:30am-4pm work routine in the States. It's not only that I have more varied tasks to do here - it's also that life here is just more spontaneous, more random, and less planned. This week, I started making a list of some of the things that made me smile throughout the week, and hopefully something on my list can make you smile today too. :)

• Marcos (7-ish years old) making car noises as he ran from the classroom to the bathroom during his English class. Don't worry, the noises included a shift once he got too fast for his first gear.
• 14 year old Jorge randomly showing up at our house since he left his backpack in our car after class. We're still not 100% sure how he knows where we live...
• Randomly running into our of our teen English students, Francisco, at the market on my way to catch a bus, and him actually being excited to see us.
• An amazing mother helping her three year old daughter start learning English, by attending class with her and practicing outside of class as well.
• Going to Mass with a bunch of the community members on Sunday at a newly-discovered (by me) Catholic church. I had missed knowing people at Mass...enough to wake up early and go to a 7am Mass!
• Randomly running into the one other American I know who lives near Managua at the mall. Apparently Nica is a smaller country than I realized. :)
• Having a ridiculous 20 minute conversation with 5 of our teen English girls before class. I had almost forgotten how silly 8th/9th grade girls are...don't worry, I've been reminded now. One of the best parts of the conversation:
  Teen: Where's your boyfriend?
  Me: I don't have one.
  Teen: Oh, okay. I have three....one here, and two at school.
  
• Hearing Lesther, a two year old in our child sponsorship program in La Chureca, laugh for the first time.
• Douglas' (another one of our child sponsorship kiddos) laugh as I catch him and spin him around.
• Good conversations with my fellow PDs - which I've had many of the past two weeks, and am extremely grateful for.
• Jose Raul, one of my math students, understanding equivalent fractions!
• Delicious ice cream that costs 1 cordoba (slightly less than $0.05)
• Using the emergency exit on a bus (most of the buses here are old school buses from the US) as a legitimate way to exit when the bus reaches my stop.
• Passionfruit and mamones, two of my favorite fruits here.
  
• E-mails/phone calls with friends from home.
• A feeling of peace, most of the time. :-)