¡Viva la Vida!

Colapsa Internet!

Last Friday one of the underwater fiber-optic cables that connects Latin America to the internet was damaged which resulted in an internet blackout for most of Central America.  Saturday's newspaper had the large and dramatic headline:  Colapsa Internet! (do I really need to translate that?). 

Fortunately the internet blackout only lasted until yesterday afternoon so we're back online.

With Thankful Hearts

We couldn't be here without the support of so many people and churches.  We give thanks to God for all the prayers, encouragement, money, gifts, and everything else you give for us.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

Today is not just my mom's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!), it's also the release date of U2's eleventh album entitled, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (listen to the album online at www.U2.com).  Unfortunately it won't be coming to Nicaragua for several more weeks so I have to be patient.  In the meantime, the Irish rockers are making the rounds and even shot a video on the streets of Manhattan yesterday capped off with a free concert in Brooklyn.   In an excellent interview with the New York Times last week Bono had this to say:

"There's cathedrals and the alleyway in our music. I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you're slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there's somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It's God."

From Christianity Today's feature about the new album called "Pop Love for a War-Torn World": 

"U2's message hasn't changed over the 28 years they've been together. It's elementary: Love. It has been an answer and an admonition running through their every album, their every tour. "Do you know how to dismantle an atomic bomb?" Bono reportedly asked Michael W. Smith earlier this year. "With love," Bono said. "With love." They leave the listener at a place where the streets have no name.

Bono and The Edge describe the album's running order as taking the listener from a place of fear, confusion, and dizzying temptations to a place where hope, peace, and love reign supreme. The first track, "Vertigo," is a bombs-away, fast-paced confessional from someone who sounds like they got more than they bargained for. The remaining songs wind their way through personal fears of death, loss, and distance from others, to global fears of wars and apathy toward the weak, the sick, and the forgotten.

As a concept, love is a little hard to grasp. Give it a body, a mind, a voice, or an action and we can know it more easily. U2 has done that, by drawing upon some very personal experiences for song material. On a surprising number of songs, that stirring U2 chemistry is at work. Bono's voice swells into, and through, the chorus while The Edge picks his way around Bono's full-bodied passion with the simplest notes."

Raza for Christ

This weekend our church hosted Raza for Christ,  a popular band around these parts.  They are a mix of reggae and rap.  Our three boys really get into their music, and had  a blast hanging out with the youth working "security" for the concert.  Jackson got pulled up on stage to dance along with a bunch of his friends (picture left) and later on got to have his picture taken with Alex.  Raza for Christ is getting ready to go to London and have a concert and then they are on to our home state for a concert in Raleigh, North Carolina!

Car Accident

Greg and I had our first car accident yesterday in Managua.  We had taken a taxi to the airport to meet a friend who was coming in.  We were to follow her and our other friends to a nice restaurant for lunch.  Our taxi driver wasn't paying attention, trying to change lanes, when our friends in front of us had to stop.  SLAM!  We hit the back of his pickup truck and did quite a bit of damage to his car body.  The police were right there when it happened, but the drivers decided to work it out between the two of them.  It took about an hour or so for them to negotiate. Our friends were very generous to help him out!  The funniest thing to us was the onlookers who knew so much and had opinions about the whole incident.

Field Trip!

Today Jan and I sponsored an end of the year field trip to that great American fast food institution called Burger King.  We took the 15 high school students with the best English grades to the spiffy clean Burger King in Managua where they were given a tour of the kitchen followed by a cheeseburger-french fries-coke lunch topped off by a refreshing cone of vanilla ice cream.  I'm not sure if we won them over to gringo food, but, just the same, they were pretty happy.   

A Martyr of Journalism

On November 9 a La Prensa newspaper reporter who had written an exposé on the fiscal mismanagement of a corrupt mayor was assassinated in the town of Chontales. The mayor (now ex-mayor ) of the town took a .38 caliber pistol and gunned down María José Bravo, a 32 year old journalist and mother of a young son, in cold blood on the street. The mayor was immediately arrested and is in jail awaiting trial. For years journalists in Latin America and elsewhere have risked their lives to report the truth. For years this truth-telling cost them their lives as corrupt politicians had them assassinated. The 1978 assassination of the truth-telling La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro was a contributing factor to the downfall of dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and, later, in 1990, Chamorro's wife Violeta was elected president (a similar stroy happened in the Philippines with Benigno and Corazon Aquino). It remains to be seen what the consequences of this most recent politically motivated assassination will be, though I believe God is at work here as this country grows into a transparent democracy where truth-tellers are free to speak and corrupt politicians are held accountable.

Where have all the cowboys gone?

Becca and Kessaya are perplexed.  You can see it on their faces but you can't hear the tune they're humming.  It's a sad melody from the song "Where have all the cowboys gone?"; Paula Cole's 1997 hit about the seeming disappearance of good men, but, in their useage, the question being asked is:  why aren't there more guys on the overseas missions field?  Ok, I'll be honest.  The purpose of this post is to pose the question rather than seek to answer it.  While we don't have specific figures of male/female ratios serving on the missions field, our experience and nearly every other missionary we've talked to (all over the world, not just in Latin America) indicate that there are many more females serving than males.  I am of course not advocating the Mormon approach of sending all college-age Christian guys on a 2-year overseas stint.  I am advocating, however, that Christian men seriously pray and ask God if they have a missions calling.    Don't misunderstand me:  I'm NOT saying that these wonderful women so faithfully serving overseas are somehow not doing a sufficient job and are therefore in need of male help.  No, quite frankly they are doing fine.  Smashingly fine.  Only they sometimes are perplexed and, for a moment, the tune above can be heard - just a faint hum - and then these sisters go back about their business. Yet the question lingers...where have all the cowboys gone?

Thanks for serving!

This is Crystal who has been here for the last three weeks helping with Jan's classes and generally being an encouragement to several missionary families. She flew out this morning for Omaha and we already miss her greatly. Thank you for coming to serve, Crystal, and remember you will always have a home in Masatepe! We wish you the best as you embark on this exciting next stage of your life. Please stay in touch! After saying our farewells to Crystal we went to the U.S. embassy in Managua in order to get Kassaya's stolen passport replaced. You would think that an 18 year old girl in a foreign country who's passport, all identification, money, and credit cards have been stolen would pretty much constitute an emergency. But no, the embassy told us we had to return at 1:30 pm (we were there at 8:00 am). So we went tooling around Managua all day and later returned to the embassy to finally get a new passport. Hallulujah!!! So now they're set but the TicaBus reservation isn't until Wednesday so they have a day to rest before embarking on the 12-hour bus ride back to San Jose, Costa Rica.

"True Cultural Experience"

This weekend we are hosting two girls who are working in Costa Rica. They had to leave their host country for a few days to renew their visas, and they wanted to come here to Nicaragua and visit one of their friends who is here in our town.  We were busy today helping watch our pastor's kids and some of their friends, so we decided to take all of them (including the Costa Rica girls) to Managua to go to the movies.  I apologized this morning that we were "just going shopping" today instead of having some sort of cultural experience.  Little did I know...

While we were eating lunch at Metrocentro, a rather large mall, someone decided to take one of the CR girls' purses.  She had everything in her bag!  Her passport, of course, being the most essential item.  Thus began our day of "cultural experience".  Now our visitors have seen more of Managua and experienced more of that then they ever wanted to.  We went to two police stations to file the "denuncia" so that we would have paperwork to give to the embassy on Monday.  We rode in three taxis to get from place to place.  We took a taxi to a bus stop, where we waited for more than half an hour for a bus that was going our way out of town.  The bus was so packed that we had to stand, amidst workers that had been out all day, smelling rather ripe.  We had to switch buses, but our friend with a mototaxi came by and took us the rest of the way home.  The girls were laughing at the Nicaraguan cultural experience.. the good, the bad, and the ugly.  We had lots of chuckles amidst terribly stressful circumstances.

My favorite moment was when the policeman decided to lecture us about our bad habits of taking our purses and putting them on the backs of chairs... this was NOT what happened to her today, it was on the floor at her feet.  We were distracted by the fact we had eleven children with us, ELEVEN, and were trying to rush to eat so we could get to the movies.  The young lady just didn't want to hear a lecture from a policeman after the fact! 

Those of you who are praying people, we would ask that you pray for our friend, Kessaya.  She is in a bit of a bind without her credit cards, money, and passport.  We will do our best to take care of her and get her back to Costa Rica, but she could use prayers for expedition of the process, and peace of mind as she is so far away from her mom.  Please lift her mom up in prayer as well, as it difficult to be so far away from her daughter in need.