Nicaragua

We've spent the last 2 days touring various ministries in Nicaragua and we have 1 more day here before we travel to Honduras.

I don't have any pictures showing the extreme poverty living conditions, but it is hard to even look at.

Views from the plane

a smoking volcano

We visited a re-nutrition center in Matagalpa, a city about 2 hours outside of the capital city. Here, they take babies and children who are malnourished and get them back to reasonable health and release them to live with family.

This little girls legs were smaller around than Anna Kate's despite being over a year older.

Guess how old this happy little girl is...

...10 years old. Extreme malnourishment stunted her growth and she could not walk correctly. They said she spoke like a 15 year old though.

One of 2 schools we visited in the capital city. This private Christian school, holding all grades, is made up of Nicaraguans and classes are taught in Spanish. It costs $70 a month to attend and is fully self-supporting.It was started in 2005 (I think that's the right year) and is at capacity with 300 students. They are planning to expand.
The vocational center within the school. They teach welding, electricity, blacksmithing, small engine repair and will add woodworking next school year.

We toured Tesaros de Dios, a center for children with special needs. Students, along with one of their family members, come 1-2 times a week for a few hours. The center is aiming to teach family members how to best care for their child/grandchild/niece/nephew.

They have horse therapy

Their computer lab

They have trained physical therapists on staff

Getting ready for devotions before learning time with trained special ed teachers

Students not ready for learning time start with early intervention

Finally we spent time touring the Nehemiah Center, a collaboration center housing 7 Christian ministry organizations. From here, these organizations are working together to make an impact across Nicaraguan businesses, schools, churches, and communities.

Getting Reacquainted

This week Trent & I get to be reintroduced to our first love...missions.

Yesterday, we flew to El Salvador with a team of seven people to see all that the Lord is doing here as well as in Nicaragua and Honduras. We hope to see ways our church can get involved in what God is doing in Central America.

This dear, humble, passionate couple is leading our trip. They've been coming to Central America for 9 years and have been a part of many amazing things happening throughout Central America.

We are meeting the people they love, visiting schools, orphanages, food centers, as well as encouraging the field workers this week. Monday we spent the day with this dear family. He is from the States, she is from El Salvador. They built this mission from the ground up.

The students eager to greet us when we arrived

visiting classrooms- this 3rd grader is doing advanced multiplication and wants to be an engineer

A class of aspiring doctors- they are hard workers

We served over 200 kids here for a special lunch

Lunch cooking

They held an assembly for us

the kindergardeners did a skit about Noah's Ark

the high schoolers did a skit about being a teen in El Salvador, where violence is prominent. They were showing how God rescues those enslaved and bears the penalty for that enslavement upon himself

this little boy came to sit on my lap during the assembly

during a walk down the road

a taxi

we visited a couple homes, including this one. For water, they have a pipe running into a cistern they built outside their home. Since the city controls when they have water and they don't know the schedule, they fill up the cistern when possible and then hope that water doesn't run out when it is turned off. This water is used for everything- bathing, washing clothes, drinking...

Wild & Wonderful

Soaking up some warm sunshine after getting in the cool river water with his Dad

we loved that we got a little hike in...so rejuvinating

Visiting St. Augustine on the drive home from WV...

West Virginia

Here's a couple pics from our time in WV last week. Unfortunately, I can't seem to upload most of our pics (including any of the outdoorsy shots). Here's a few for now...

Well, this is actually Anna Kate & her great-grandmother in Cincinnati. So, we start with a non-WV pic in this WV post. :) Anna Kate & I snuck over to Cincinnati for one night to visit my grandmother who was recently widowed. It was a sweet visit.

Here's Anna Kate with Trent's sweet cousin, Laura.

On June 4th, we got to celebrate with Trent's sister, Brianna as she married her love.

We enjoyed some front porch sitting with Trent's lovely grandmother.

This is the view from that front porch :)

Happy 1st Birthday Anna Kate!!

While we were in WV, we celebrated our sweet girl's first birthday with Trent's family.

Anticipating the party...

All her gifts hanging on the back of her chair.

She ate her whole cupcake.

with Nana & Papaw

Hudson loved celebrating her birthday too. He got to help open presents and eat cookie cake.

She's walking almost exclusively now. She's still slow & wobbly, but doesn't crawl very much anymore.

She loves carrying something with her at all times (my wallet, one of Hudson's shirts, really whatever she can get her hands on). We gave her a blanket for her birthday. It's one that someone made for her when she was born but we hadn't used.

She's now saying "mama" "dada", "night night" and loves to wave. She also loves to be on her mama's hip.

We love you Anna Kate!