Nicaragua trip: Overview

I weep a bit this morning thinking a lot about how God's moving through us and others at Nicaragua! It was awesome to see how God used every ounce of our strength and skills to accomplish His purpose! We saw how God used our love for each other to draw a person to us, so we added Ken to our 17 members in the team that followed our two missionaries, Matt and Eva Barlow! Ken was a huge addition to the team, it is as if we added 3 persons to our 17 to make us 20 or so! He is talented in the construction, so he showed us a lot of easy stuff by using the proper technique to do this or that! He joined us for the last two days of work on Friday and Saturday. It is amazing how God answered G-man's (I forgot his name, but it starts with G) prayer when he made a desk out of the used wood using his own tools, then he also made a ladder with leverage! He even joined us for the farewell dinner to give Matt and Eva many gratitudes! He claimed that he felt part of the spiritual family when he joined us, and that God has blessed him through us. And I believe that we all felt the same!

I was also blessed with the opportunity to joke my team a lot by using Nicaragua signs on the way back home. Even I joked my family with those learned signs through videophone at Matt and Eva's house! The team enjoyed watching and learn more about my family, videophone, and my loving pestering. It is amazing how the entire team learned Nicaragua signs, when I was free, I looked around and marveled at how each of us tried to learn some signs from the kids at the school! The kids are amazing! I enjoyed some games of volleyball with them, dinner with them, and watch their drama and dance! Rusty and I also had the chance to share the testimony with three different interpreter/translator (including Eleasha, Elissa, and Daniel)... I signed in ASL, then it is followed by spoken English, then spoken Spanish, then Nicaragua signs to include everyone! This is definitely a beautiful moment! DANG!

I met an amazing deaf lady, Janeth Estebana Mendoza Cruz, who is at my age! She is now taking some classes to become a deaf teacher someday. She also want to go to an university someday although there is a barrier! There is no laws for the deaf there like we do in America. So most of them will either work a low pay job such as janitor or etc... or have no job. Only few of them may become a teacher like Janeth by taking some classes and teach at a deaf school. She knows a lot of ASL because she learned some ASL from a book 3 years ago! So, obviously this young lady had the ability to "self-learn"! Here is the estimate monthly cost for the classes at the university there, $25... but if the deaf will have to pay for the interpreter, an average interpreter will earn $4 per hour, for 5 of 2 hour classes per week... it will cost each person around $160 monthly or so... it is out of balance, almost 6x the amount of the classes! (FYI it is not very accurate)... Also an average wages the workers earned per day is $6... imagine that! How could they afford to go to an university?! But Janeth dreams of going to an university... maybe she may be the first deaf person to attend an university in Nicaragua in the future... or even go to a neighbor country. We need to pray for the Nicaragua government to change, and they will.