Day 3: Cinnamon Rolls, Painting, and a trip to La Churreca

Hello family and friends! Its Natalie here, I have been given the privilege of sharing today’s events with you all, and lets just say it was a memorable day.

For myself and five other girls, our day started earlier than the rest because we walked to the bakery at 7am to help bake cinnamon rolls for the rest of the group. We also got to help the guys make other pastries that they would sell for profit for the orphanage. The best moment of the morning was when the guys asked Sami and I if we were tired, apparently we were not kneading the dough hard enough for them. I had so much fun I’m waking up early again tomorrow with a new group to go bake some more!

After filling our stomaches with fresh cinnamon rolls (they were so good, I ate 5) we made our way over to the orphanage to start our work project for the week. We have been given the opportunity to finish painting some trim, paint the gates, and sand some picnic tables so they can be re sealed. As a leader, it was so fun watching the students really dig in and work hard all morning, especially watching them use their heads to solve problems. One specific problem was the lack of ladders, but that didn’t stop them. They just decided to jump up and down over and over again to paint as high as they could without a ladder—this was funny to watch—or they just pulled up the closest picnic table and stood on it, they are just so smart. Be proud. After the hard mornings work, we came back and had cheeseburgers for lunch. So good.

In the afternoon we took a trip to “La Churreca” or “the Dump”. For those of you who don’t know, there is a community of around 800 people who have made their home in the Managua Dump. They live there and make their earnings by digging through the trash to find recycleables. This was, as you can imagine, a very emotionally challenging experience for most of the students including myself. Seeing this extreme poverty and way of life is not comfortable. However, the students really stepped it up. We took about 20 of the students from the school in La Churreca to a baseball and soccer field outside in a community near by. Seeing the students really loving kids they had just met by playing soccer, baseball, and Frisbee was very humbling—and to top it off it was raining most of the time but that didn’t stop anyone. I often found myself sitting back and watching all the laughter and piggy back rides that were going on and thought about how for just these two hours we were given the chance to bring smiles and laughter to kids who may not have many reasons to laugh otherwise. I think this afternoon will be one that not many of us will forget.

We ended this day with a porch time lead by Leslie. She shared about how now that we are here, experiencing Nicaragua and seeing the extreme poverty we are called by God to respond to what we have seen and not forget about the people in Nicaragua. We looked at Luke 12:48 where Jesus says, “ From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” We talked about this verse in reference to our experience here. Because we are here and have seen the poor, we are expected to not forget them and even act in a way that will serve them.

As I write you, I am sitting on the porch listening to the sounds and smelling the smells of Nicaragua (or maybe that’s me cause I haven’t showered yet), but needless to say I am so thankful to be here experiencing this trip with these students. So thank you for all of your support for them and for myself, I feel so blessed to be here.

God Bless,

 Natalie

 P.S. Katie Hagan says she loves you (mom) and have a safe trip!