Nica News from Ed & Linda Baker January, 2009

Hot, colorful, volcanoes, black dust, watermelons, cantaloupes, avocadoes – these are just a few of the words we use when we think about Nicaragua – did we mention HOT?  We know for you Northern friends this doesn’t sound so bad, but even at night we only cool down to 95°, and our house doesn’t have air conditioning.  While writing this, Linda tried to take a shower this morning, and found no water.  That wasn’t too bad till we also realized we had no electricity.  We feel right at home!  Besides sweating, sweeping (2x daily), and chasing mice out of the house – we’ve had a busy January. Sweeping - we have lots of black dust in our house.  We live less than 20 miles from the San Cristóbal Volcano which is active.  There is constantly smoke coming from the volcano, which settles ash over everything.  To add to this, the fields have been scraped clean – no vegetation left in the ground.  This is a windy time here in Nicaragua, so all that black volcanic dust just flies everywhere.  People here also burn their trash.  Not as much as they did in Paraguay, since we do have trash pick-up; but burning of leaves, sticks, & limbs is constant.  We keep sweeping & dusting furniture. Photo on the left - There’s just something special about being able to eat good, sweet watermelon in January!

We arrived in Nicaragua at the end of December, but we were on the road again on January 2^nd.  We had a Regional Meeting with The Mission Society in Costa Rica.  We always enjoy getting together with the other missionaries serving in Spanish speaking countries.  This year we discussed the problem of dependency that missionaries can face (or create) when working with national churches.  We also had some good Bible teaching from the book of Colossians.  It’s always good to hear The Word in English.

Linda had a sad ending to her time in Costa Rica.  Linda’s nephew, Keith O’Toole’s wife passed away suddenly on January 2^nd.  Stephanie was only 29 years young when she died.  Linda was able to fly to Kansas City to be with Keith and family for the memorial services for Stephanie.  They married in Sept. 2003, and Linda was also able to attend their wedding.

We were both back in Nicaragua by the end of the 2^nd week of January.  We found a house to rent, but will try to move again in June.  The house is in a secure area, but we are living beside rooms rented by the night or by the week.  It is very noisy with folks coming in all during the night to rent rooms. 

By January 19th, we were unpacking all of our things we had shipped by container from Paraguay.  We were happy to see some of our clothes, as we have been wearing the same things since we left Paraguay in October.  It seems like we have so many “new” things! This is a photo of the front door of our house, looking into the living room.

Just as we got all our boxes unpacked, our first team for Nicaragua arrived on January 23.  They were from Memorial UMC in Fernandina Beach, FL.  We worked with the team at the MEFEL campground in Tipitapa, which is near Managua.  (Where we live in Chinandega is about 150 kilometers northwest of Managua.)  What was also special is that Janice Colvin & her daughter, Shelly Seib, joined the Memorial team.  Janice is a former employee of The Mission Society and was instrumental in helping us through the process of being approved as missionaries.

We had a busy time doing lots of chores around the camp – a never ending list supplied by Ronnie & Angi Hopkins who are the directors of the camp!  The team built counters in the bathrooms, painted the bathrooms, wired new fans in the dormitories, worked on various lights around the campus, plus had a VBS for some of the local children.  The team also joined a local, Nicaraguan doctor for a one day clinic at one of the outlying churches.