tapestry nicaragua '08

the receipt for water at kilumbo
we are back from nicaragua and my stomach is slowly but surely surviving my swap from nicaraguan to american food (major food changes always throw me off – much like my dogs). as always there is way too many amazing things for me to post them all. therefore, i will only post a few.

  1. the baltadanos are incredible – they are my friends and they are the ones doing all the cool ministry down there. we anglos get to work along side them and it is a privilege to do so.
  2. tapestry is incredible – i loved working and hanging with our group. they did amazing stuff and came up with some great new ideas. it is so cool planting a church with these guys and girls.
  3. we got to hook kilumbo up with water – the families that used to live in the dump have been moved 45 minutes away to an area called kilumbo. this is a mixed blessing. the positive side is that the kids no longer live int he dump. the negative side is their parents still have to survive off scavenging from the dump and that is a 45 minute walk away. along with this they didn’t have any running water and were getting sick constantly. you can see a photo of their water cistern here. pam found out about this and then as a group we were able to get them connected to clean water. that’s what the above photo is about. it’s the receipt from having them connected. that receipt will be framed and become a part of tapestry worship. there is something just plain cool about bringing fresh water to people while you are talking about the living water of JESUS.
  4. things are improving but we still have miles to go – this was my sixth year down there and significant improvements have happened in some areas. yet, there is still so much that can be done. tapestry is committed to kilumbo (which is a part of diriamaba). we are going to see life there improve. i am more and more convinced that with the baltadanos we can be a part of GOD doing something amazing.
  5. we suck at soccer (a.k.a football) – we always get our butts kicked. i will same that the diriagen game (the local professional team) we saw down there was incredible.

i’ll post more later but i need to leave emy j’s now and head home.

SIDE NOTE – i just finished talking with a local radio station’s ad guy and i think it is going to be possible for tapestry to buy some ad time on that station before we launch. of course, this is not a CHRISTian station because it would not be in our character to advertise to church people. we’ll be the only church advertising on their station (at least for the short time we advertise). we’re talking about doing an ad that is a cross between a monster truck rally and a church opening ad. just imagine “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!” it should be fun. 🙂