Hiatus

Another unexpected shift, besides those in my last post, has occurred upon my return home.

My blogging energy has evaporated.

I feel a need to focus, instead, on surrender and on drafting the book.

So, I’m taking a blogging break. I don’t know how long.

If I resume, I’ll announce it via Facebook and emails.(Become my Facebook friend!)

Meanwhile, I’d appreciate your occasionally  lifting up the Nehemiah Center, Nicaraguans, and the book project before our Father.

Signing off till we meet again, wherever and whenever  He brings that to pass.

Carol

Unexpected

I expected that, back home from Nicaragua, I would think longer before buying.

And I do.

I have decided not to replace the glass nail file that broke in two last month. I postponed ordering a new swimsuit, and after two days ordered one for half the price of my first choice.

I expected to appreciate open skies and open spaces.

And I do.

I inhaled deeply,  exhale slowly, as I take in wide ditches, open yards, and a cosmic bowl of sky.

I expected to bundle up more against the Iowa winter.

And I do, swathing my hands in leather, my face in fur.

I expected to study more Spanish, type my journals, begin work on the book.  These, too, I do.

I am also surprised.

I did not expect to start cleaning mildew from the cracks of my shower.

I did not expect to spend 30 minutes on the treadmill each morning.

I did not expect to organize my underwear, soak my combs and brushes, or empty the hutch drawer of its stash of outdated prayer guides and Today devotional booklets.

I do not understand.

Neither did I expect to rebel against my perennial need to understand, organize, analyze, find reasons for. . .

Has God has shifted my tectonic plates?

I know not.

He’s not asking me to control--

But to surrender.

Homecoming

I wake up scratching two welts on my ankle.

 I wish I had used Off after my final Nicaragua shower.

The sky is grey with impending snow.

There is no sun streaming through lace curtains.

No cool morning breeze through louvered glass.

No concert of a thousand  birds.

No smell of huevos rancheros (eggs and salsa).

No slanting dormer above me.

No splashing from an already-occupied shower.

I slip into fleece-lined slippers,

stir up a mug of Cafe Francais,

snuggle into my recliner with a fuzzy blanket,

and open the Pella Chronicle.


It is good to be home.

It was good to be gone.

Except for the bugs.

Commencement

It’s 4 p.m. and I’m in the Nehemiah Center wicker rocker one last time, staring up at an eight-foot “Bienvenidos!” (Welcome!)

It is totally inappropriate.

In an hour I leave the Nehemiah Center.


Tomorrow morning we depart Nicaragua.

·       We have been here 28 days.

·        I have conducted 25 interviews, taken 500 photos, and visited 12 different communities.

·      I have made 35 blog posts that were visited 385 times by 116 different readers.

Tomorrow it ends.

Or does it?

Maybe, as commencement speakers say, this is not an end, but a start:

·        A start to learning God will use this month to change me

·        A start to a longer relationship with the Nehemiah Center and Nicaragua

·        A start to launching a book

I had planned this blog would end today.

I have changed my mind.

For a season, I will continue.

Already impacted by Nicaragua, after a debate with myself I decide to let the word “season” remain—ambiguous, unedited. 

I reject my North-American impulse make that word precise.

So, blog readers, you may continue to check back once or twice a week for a season, to see how the commencement is faring.

“Bienvenidos”  still stares at me from across the room.

Appropriate.

And welcoming.

Points of Light

Today is our last one here.

On our first day, I found Managua’s tunnel-streets oppressive. I still do.

At 6 p.m. on winter nights, I find Pella streets oppressive, too. The Iowa sky has no right to be so dark so early.

Last night I remembered, how in the Iowa night, to combat the depressing black, I search for points of light— a street light, approaching car, or radiant window.

From the Managua taxi this morning, I seek Managua’s points of light, and find them.

-A row of blooming trinitario (bougainvillea).

-An eight-foot poinsettia.

-A brightly painted corner store.

-A collection of palm trees.

-A woman watering her dirt road to reduce dust.

It is hard work.

So is looking for points of light in the Iowa night.

But it is work I am called to by the Rose of Sharon, the Light of the World.

This is my Father’s world—every corner of it.

Peace, Be Still

Ten days into our Nicaragua trip, Cousin Gene Addink emailed from South Dakota.
His message began, “Congratulations, you have the best blog I have ever read.”

What a hook! It was the best lead sentence possible.

And he’s an accountant.

He described himself as “an aggressive businessman for whom getting ahead in business is what I think about most of the time.”

Then he wrote about his June trip to Dominican Republic:

I decided to go and taken on NO responsibility for the trip other than to show up where the leaders to me to show up and do what they told me to do.

It was a glorious week of no responsibility.

And when my mind was free, it allowed God in.


I had filled it so full of daily “duties,” that I had only allocated a small amount of time in the day to let him speak to me.


Since that trip, I allow myself time to communicate better with our Creator.

In business, I have always known that in communication with others it is better to listen than to speak.

In Dominican Republic, I learned that same principal applies to my communication with God.

I learned to listen more, speak less. . . .

Three weeks ago, I resonated with Gene’s email. In recent years, I too have learned the richness of listening prayer.

This morning I think again about his email. I realize that I’ve been    listening non-stop to God’s people in Nicaragua.

Not allowing time for my soul to catch up with my body.

Not emptying my heart and soul and mind in selfless yes to Him.

So, I sit in the wicker rocker.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know.


Be still.

Be. . . .
By the way, my cousin’s concluding line was also a zinger. He ended:

Oh, and did I mention this before? Your blog site is also the FIRST blog site I have ever read.

Crossing Cultures

Catching a morning breeze in a wicker rocker at the Nehemiah Center lobby, I type a to-do list for the next three days.

Dave Boone, for whom Marlo did an engineering drawing, enters an an adjacent rocker. He asks how the book is going and says he’ll be talking with Marlo about some small additions to the project. 


Then he works on wireless Internet access for his Ipod.

I know Marlo’s first-love among his projects here has been the engineering one.

And he has been frustrated by a repeated delay in receiving the promised numbers for an accounting project.

 I eagerly offer, “Shall I get Marlo, for you? He’s in the office next door.”

Dave declines. He has to finish a couple of things first.

I smile wryly, and say. “I know—I’m still in North American mode. Marlo teased me the other day, “Empuje, empuje, empuje. (Push, push, push.)”

Marlo had said that last week when I asked our guest house hosts if the swing would be back in service by Tuesday—since the promised Monday deadline would be missed.

Dave, a Californian who has been in Central America for 18 months, smiled back. “You adjust,” he says. “What it takes is two or three projects where you get uptight when things don’t go as planned.”

“And then it turns out all right in the end.

“Last week we had a Canadian work team here, and one man said, ‘Come, on. Let’s move. Let’s move. Time is money.

“And I hadn’t heard that in so long it was a shock.

“Sometimes time is money. Sometimes it’s not.

“It’s not that one way is better, that one culture is right and the other wrong. They’re just different.

“And perhaps the ideal is somewhere between them.”

I nod and opt to stay seated.

But as soon as our Subway-sandwich-lunch is delivered, I eagerly summon Marlo to the lobby, alerting him to Dave’s presence.

Marlo can eat bread and have that conversation, too.

I've neatly maneuvered that one.

Now, if only that swing, promised last Tuesday, will be ready today. . . .

Heavenly Laughter

On our Leon trip with the Canadian team we learn that Leon is significantly hotter than Managua. Enroute to Saturday night lodging, fifteen of us sweat together, windows open, in a van that would max out at nine passengers in the U.S.

The hotel owner, a North American, has given our reserved-and-paid-for rooms to others. We make do with a bathroom shortage and two persons per bed.

The window has a broken pane.

The ceiling fan fails to turn.

The toilet does not flush.

A pancake-sized welt on my arm—a gift from a tropical bug—stings and burns.

I bed down with a Canadian woman I met yesterday, throw off the stifling top sheet, lie still, and try not to scratch. I fight for sleep.

And I remember Nigerian missionary Robert Recker speaking to my Iowa Sunday School class when I was eleven. He showed jungle slides and issued a challenge:  Maybe God is calling you to the mission field!

I was terrified. Please, God, don’t call me be a missionary to primitive and bug-infested Africa. Please. Please! PLEASE!

He didn’t.

He graciously called me to writing instead.

Now, fifty years later, he has sent me to primitive and bug-infested Central America.

Amid the Nicaragua night sounds, I think I hear Him chuckle.

--Written Monday, February 1, remembering Saturday night, January 30.