Quarterly Review

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to take a few days, get out of the Manna house, and reflect on the past 3 months. It is crazy how quickly the past three months have passed - I still have some days where I feel like I just arrived! Particularly in the past few weeks, I have been very, very busy, and sometimes it's easy to miss the bigger picture when I am so busy with the details. Having a few days to relax as a group, reflect on where we've been and what we've accomplished, and discuss what our goals are for the next few months was both beneficial and enjoyable.

As a group, we made a list of our successes and the things that we are most proud of from the last couple months, and I'd like to share a few of them with you:

• Community relationships - it has been a huge blessing to get the chance to connect with the families who live in Cedro Galan, Chiquilistagua, and La Chureca. I have really enjoyed just having the opportunity to spend time with them, learn more about their daily life, and understand this country and these communities better. I don't have as much time to do this as I wish, but I really enjoy the time I do spend in the community.
• Good transition and continued high attendance in programs - due to the turnover with Manna PDs each year, it's sometimes difficult to have continuity in programs and to maintain attendance as things change. Many people have remarked that we have done a good job picking up where last year's PDs left off and continuing forward with each program. It has been great to see our program attendance remain high, and in some programs even increase.
• Our first milk day without the old PDs, the day where we hand out food for the month to our child sponsorship kiddos, went off incredibly smoothly. A lot of this had to do with two qualities which kept coming up again and again as successes: everyone's ability to be proactive and to be flexible. A combination of these two is definitely needed here - as a group, we've been able to do quite a bit due to everyone being proactive, and have a clean house, a restructured English program, and some new partnerships to show for it. However, as with everything here in Nicaragua, nothing ever goes exactly as planned, and flexibility is key. :)

There's many more, but those are definitely a few of the highlights for me from the past few months.

We also took the opportunity to make some goals for the next few months. They ranged from small things, like trying every flavor of ice cream at the store next to Farito and keeping the house clean, to bigger goals like reaching out to more families in the communities, saying thank you more often, and planning ahead more for our programs. I hope that, in a few more months when we have our second retreat, we're able to look back on these goals and count them as our successes.

I also took the time to reflect and make some personal goals for myself, which I'm still working on follow-through for. My main goal for myself for the next few months is to stay present in Nicaragua and make sure I'm mentally here all the time. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, it's been a balancing act to determine how much to keep in touch with friends from home. It continues to be a balancing act, and is easier some days than others. This past week, I have done a pretty good job of being present here regardless of things happening at home - probably due to being so busy that I didn't have time to think about home much even if I wanted to. As the next few months pass, I hope to fall into a natural rhythm of continuing friendships at home, but also deepening relationships here and making sure that my focus stays here in Nicaragua with me.

Here are a few pictures from the retreat - a group dinner at a real table (which we are lacking in our house), and a Pacific ocean sunset.

Getting ready for a delicious meal of lasagna

I had some fun playing with photography on the beach - the sunset was gorgeous!