Turn Around Now!

My week has been full of crunching numbers, fixing retaining walls, trying to order "good quality" fence posts and exploding septic tanks. I have a lot written below so I will forgo the details for now on these projects. I will try to get more updates out on these ongoing projects including the trash and recycling/compost area construction for another time.

I also have photos I took today of the house construction posted online. I have decided to post them online to chronologically track the progress on the house. This way anyone who is interested can see the progress publicly from our website. Also I can send out notices via email without crashing Peter's ancient computer with email attachments. So the link with the most recent construction photos is: http://picasaweb.google.com/CampoAlegria/GuestHouseConstruction
I will be posting the older photos at a later time.

Tomorrow we have another interesting group coming to Campo for a Day, but there is a bit of a story about how they found us.

The day Peter's Family left camp I stayed around for a while to help clean with Oscar. Finally I headed home on the motor bike, as I was about five minutes down the beach I came upon on a group of young kids (girls) swimming in the water next to a flatbed truck parked on the beach. There must have been about fifty young teenagers in all and they seemed like they were having a blast in the water and on the beach. I immediately knew they must be from some sort of Orphanage or School. As I got closer I noticed there were some Nuns sitting in the sand out in the sun with some rickety old chairs with coolers next to them. I slowed down and just out of curiosity I pulled over to talk to the driver of the bus. The wind was blowing hard that day and so I had to yell for him to hear me and I attempted to ask him where he was from. He said they were from a Catholic Orphanage in Granada and that they had driven all the way (2 hours) from Granada just to swim in the lake in Rivas because the lake in Granada was so disgusting and polluted. I then proceeded to ask him how much longer they were going to be at the beach (my intent was to invite them to camp for the day). He must not have understood me correctly because he said only ten minutes. I was surprised because it didn't look like they were going to be leaving in ten minutes but I said "OK" anyway and headed on down the beach.

As I headed down the beach I couldn't get the group out of my mind, something kept telling me to turn around and double check their plans with the leaders. I convinced myself that it was my imagination talking and that I should get home because Rachel would be glad to see me for lunch. Further down the beach, again I heard a voice tell me to turn around. I told myself I was tired, plus I would look like an idiot going back there and bothering them again with the same question. Finally right as I was entering the road exiting the beach, again something said: Turn Around Now! I was so far away I couldn't see the group anymore at all so I stopped my bike and basically said: "God if you want me to turn around I will, but I'm not happy about it".

I turned around on the beach and drove all the way back down to the group feeling embarrassed as if I was some sort of stalker. As I pulled up I stopped next to the Nuns sitting on the beach in the sun and introduced myself in Spanish and asked them how long they were going to be on the beach for. One Nun looked at me with a smirk as if she knew I would be coming back and answered me in perfect English; "we just got here and we will be here all day". Suddenly I realized that I was meant to turn around, and that it hadn't been my own voice in my head I had been hearing.

I immediately told them who I was and what Campo Alegria was and that it was down the beach only five minutes. I told them they would be welcome to use it free for the day, they could use the kitchen and dinning hall for their lunch, the bathrooms would be available, that we had drinking water and places for them to sit out of the sun with hammocks and chairs. The Nun who spoke English suddenly sprain to here feet and said "YES, we would love to come"! She then proceeded to round up the girls in excitement telling all of them in Spanish that everyone needed to pack up immediately and hop on the truck because we were headed somewhere else for the day; suddenly this frenzy broke out of excitement and anticipation that I hadn't expected. The nun was telling all of the girls in Spanish: "see, God always takes care of us, always!"

The girls were all having fun and singing and talking on the truck as we headed down the beach; myself on a motorbike followed by a flatbed truck full of fifty singing kids and three nuns probably looked a little bit weird to bystanders. As we arrived at camp we pulled up in between the dinning hall and the first cabin courtesy of the new road next to the house. As we pulled up suddenly the singing and giggling on the truck simmered down and shock set it of what exactly the Camp was. The team must have been expecting a small shack on a sand dune or something similar because they didn't know what to do with themselves at first. None of them seemed to be able to believe that a place like Campo Alegria could exist five more minutes down the beach from where they were. As the group unloaded from the truck they kept asking permission to enter the buildings, I kept reiterating; "yes it's all yours for the day". The Nuns kept asking me; are you sure it's free? No cost? Nothing?

The team had brought a pot of beans that had been pre-cooked at the orphanage before leaving and had planned on eating it cold on the beach. Beatrice came up to help and we immediately fired up the stoves and began warming them up for lunch. The group had a great day lounging in the hammocks on the porches and swimming in the lake.
This group ended up being one of the most polite and considerable teams I have ever seen use the camp. The Catholic Orphanage requires all the attending children to take English, Music and Dance Lessons as part of their daily program. Throughout the day many of the children practiced there English on me as we hung out together around camp, played their guitars, sang songs and practiced their dance routines in the dinning hall. Oscar and I also saddled up some horses so the kids could take turns riding up and down the beach throughout the day.

As I talked more with the Nuns I learned that the Orphanage was actually a Mother Teresa Home for the Poor, and that all of the girls in the Orphanage had been rescued from situations in which they were either abandoned or abused. There was one girl who I will always remember, she was severely retarded and was unable to walk or talk and had to be carried around from place to place by the other girls. She was nineteen years old but looked like a ten year old and she had been found tied to a tree in Granada on a street. She had been at the Orphanage for about a year and was so cared for and loved by the other girls it was an amazing thing to see. The other girls all took turns helping her out and included her in everything they did, Oscar and I carried her down to the beach so she could sit in the water with her peers and it was an amazing thing to see how much love was in the hearts of the children that day.

The Head Nun also told me that earlier that day as they were leaving Granada the kids had asked her where they were going to stay in Rivas while swimming. She had responded, "I don't know but God will take care of us, he always takes care of us". She explained to me that when she saw me pull up on the beach for the first time and talk with the driver she had thought "this is it; God is going to do something". She also mentioned that she wasn't very surprised at all when I had come back the second time to talk to them again.

As the team started packing up to leave that evening Oscar and I were mingling around to say our goodbyes to the team. The group then asked if they could sing a song to us before leaving and of course we said yes. The entire orphanage proceeded to line up like a choir and pull out two guitars they had in tow. They sang one of the most beautiful Spanish songs I have heard and they were so happy radiant as a group. I had a true missionary moment as I stood there with the sun setting and the volcanoes in the background with a beautiful group of people who love God singing together. It was just another day at Campo for me until I turned around and went back on direction from God and it ended up being a day that I will always remember. It reminded me why I am in Nicaragua in the first place, and how when we choose to be obedient to God and trust in him he will bless us in ways that we could never imagine. This was my favorite day in Nicaragua thus far.

Oscar and I took a special trip to visit the Orphanage in Granada the week after and got to meet with the directors and have a look around. It is an amazing place.

Although we need to charge groups at camp for their usage to pay our bills, I'm afraid I have a small addiction to allowing groups like these to come for free. This group will be visiting tomorrow at camp; for free again, and I will be so glad to see them.

Chop Point

Well, Chop Point has come and gone in the blink of an eye.

It was a great two weeks having the Chop Point crew at Campo. They are the masters and inventors of running kids camps in Nicaragua and this year was yet another exceptional adventure.

We had a few obstacles as usual, some bigger than others, but I couldn't think of a better group of people to have around to roll with the punches and dodge the bullets that Nicaragua can throw at a mission team than the Chop Point gang.

In the past years there has never been a problem with pulling the entire small school in Buenos Aries out of class to come to Campo Alegria for a few days for fun and learning. The teachers saw it beneficial as did the parents of the students, and in recent years so did the superintendent of schools. This year however there seems to be a new superintendent of schools and all of a sudden a week long field trip didn't seem like such a great idea anymore. Oscar and I tried to talk with the superintendent and explain that although a week away from school may sound ludicrous to them, the students would be experiencing things that they would never get in a normal five hour school day here in Nicaragua.

Not a lot of Nicaraguan children get to break rocks into sand on the beach and then go and look at it under a microscope for the first time and draw what they see on a microscopic level. Not many children will get the chance to learn basic English skills on a fun and interactive level that will give many of them the desire to go and learn more later on in life and possibly change their future. Not many children in Nicaragua get to swim and play in the lake with High School students from the US who are willing to take the time to mentor a youngster and show them a kind and gentle spirit. (Not to mention geography, arts and crafts, puzzles, the best food they have ever had and a movie every night before bed).

In light of all these things we were just passed off to the superintendents in Managua who require a personal meeting with a presentation of who we are as an organization. This will all be done at a later date, but for the time being we had to adjust our calendar a bit. Instead of a week long camp, we settled for two weekend camps.

Both camps went extremely well, and in the end everything was a success.

As usual, at the end of the camp Chop Point handed out donated backpacks, school supplies, clothes and shoes to the kids before they loaded the bus.

Chop Point has posted their daily updates of their trip on their Websites Blog at: http://nicaragua.choppoint.org/

Or you can find them under the Campo Alegria Blog Roll at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Campoblogrollerfeed where you can subscribe by RSS to all of Campo Alegria affiliated team blogs like Chop Point's.

Photos have been posted of the Chop Point trip to the Campo Alegria Photo Compilation Here: http://www.campoalegria.com/MediaDownloads/Photos/

You can find out more about Chop Point the organization at: http://www.choppoint.org/

From the Mission Teams Mouth

We don't think there is a better way to express how the Maine Street Baptist trip went in February than to just post thier own words straight from their team blog. So here it is:


"Well. We came, we saw, and we shared The Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have returned home to Brunswick, ME now, and I know that I, personally can say that my life will never be the same. We experienced poverty & opression, pain, joy, sadness, laughter, and tears EVERY day in Nicaragua. We fell in love with the people and the culture, and I know that I can personally say my passion for the foreign mission field grew tenfold over the past week and a half.We built the addition to the Marenco's home, hosted EFL classes, held our Childrens' Camp, attended a local church, toured Granada and Mesaya, visited San Juan Del Sur on the Pacific Coast.. But I would think it safe to say that the most important thing we did was built relationships. The Nicaraguan people are no longer strangers to us, but they are now friends and some are even brothers and sisters in the unified body of Christ. I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the entire group as we left Campo Alegria to begin our journey home. We will miss the friends and experiences we shared. This trip far exceeded any expectations any of us could ever have imagined, and for that, our little group of 12 has formed a bond which cannot be severred. And now we can't help but to ask ourselves "Was it all a dream, or did it really happen?"..."
Posted by: Erika Devonne

Maine Street Baptist

New Camp Photos from the Maine Street Baptist Church team in Brunswick, Maine have been posted online at: http://campoalegria.com/MediaDownloads/Photos/

You can check out the trip blog at:
http://www.msbcnica.blogspot.com/

More updates on the teams trip coming soon!

Cross Point

A team from Cross Point Ministries in Tennessee came a few weeks ago and ran one of the best kid’s camps I have seen in awhile.


The attending children were from an Orphanage in Didiamba where our good friends Emerson and OCL Diaz help to coordinate it along side their amazing Mother. The camp was four days long and the kids had a blast. It wasn't the first time for all of the kids to be at Campo thanks to OCL and Emerson’s involvement in the past but we did have some new guys who have been added to the Orphanage since the last trip. The Cross Point Camp photos have been posted on our website at: http://www.campoalegria.com/MediaDownloads/Photos/.


The team did an amazing job with crafts and outside games. Dodge ball, swimming and relays were some of the bigger hits. It was the fist time I have seen an activity in Sand Castle building; it was a genius idea.



We're looking forward to having Cross Point back again next year.


You can see the Cross Point website at: http://www.crosspointinternational.org/

Spiritual T-Shirts

Rachel and I are getting excited to come home this Christmas for a few weeks and visit everyone in Maine as well as gather our documents for our Nica residency permits. We have been busy this week getting a foundation set up and poured for Maine Street Baptist in February that will be building the addition for the Morenco family down the beach. We are also signing up kids for a camp they will run and ESL classes they will have for the school teachers and other locals who are interested.

Our local school down the beach let out last week for the end of the year. I decided to attend the Parent/Teacher meeting with Oscar. As report cards were being passed out I decided to take a peek at His son's (Yasser) grades. He is an excellent student and gets very good grades maybe one day he can attend Chop Point if he wishes and then return to Nicaragua to make a difference. He begins English classes in a year.
At the local school meeting I began to notice the situation many of the people in our area are in. Most of them walked to the meeting, some rode their horse drawn carts, and maybe one or two rolled in on a beat up motorbike. I began to notice a considerable difference between the families living in Buenos Aires and those living 10 minutes away in Rivas. I had never really noticed the large social gap before, sometimes coming straight from America you see everyone as poor in Nicaragua; but in actuality there really is a large dividing line between a small town like Rivas and the even more forgotten countryside surrounding Camp. Tattered cloths, no electricity, little work and little healthcare is the daily life for so many people in our area. Driving ten minutes away in San Jorge you begin to instantly see homes with cars, water and electricity.

The school struggles so much; they are a hundred yards from power lines but will never have the money to get electricity at the school for fans, lights or a water pump. Not only does “organization” seem to drop off at Buenos Aires but so does help. The missionary line in Nicaragua still seems to diminish around the Granada area, and only two other families besides ours are currently in Rivas. There is a definite battle to fight discouragement and hopelessness in towns like Buenos Aires that you can see so vividly as I talked to the teachers about the future of the school.

It can get difficult living in a Rivas, it’s off the beaten track for missions and there are very few ex-pats to mingle with. Even in the travel books, all of the cities of Nicaragua are highlighted for tourists, except for Rivas. Most travel books recommend the only reason anyone would want to stay in Rivas is if you’re passing through on your way to Ometepe, San Juan or Costa Rica. Even when I talk with mission teams and missionaries in Nicaragua, it’s a common line to mention how far away Campo is from Managua and how much easier it is to go to the other cities in Nicaragua with mission teams.

As I was listening to the financial plans for this coming year at the school I noticed a child sitting in front of me on a step patiently waiting for the long “boring” meeting to get over. He was playing with rocks and twigs on the ground in front of him trying his hardest to be patient. As I was thinking about the irony in the lack of money, help and man power available for a country so close to the U.S., I notice one of my favorite things in Nicaragua.

The boy’s shirt said Wells Beach. Even when I saw the shirt, Wells Beach didn’t click at first. But then after thinking a little bit more, of course it was a shirt from Wells Beach, Maine. In a small country town in Southern Nicaragua, where there are no major mission bases or constant flows of missions teams - you can find shirts that mark the treading of a small non-profit organization in Woolwich, Maine. Sure you can find signs of Chop Point in La Chureca and probably some other parts of Nica as well, but it’s more impressive to me that you can find signs of donations and volunteer work in a “forgotten town” like Buenos Aires. This is boring to most people and it really isn’t that big of a deal, but I find the more I invest my time in Campo the more rewarding it is to see the impact in the community.
More than anything, a t-shirt is a symbol for something much greater than just clothing. It’s a sign of the eternal impact that Campo Alegría is making in peoples lives. Every camp we have is another seed that is sown, another opportunity to follow up on, and another door is opened; it’s a huge calling. It is overwhelming sometimes when I realized how isolated we really are here. Sometimes it crosses my mind that if only Campo was a little bit closer to Managua than all of our problems would be solved. But seeing a shirt from Wells Beach, Maine on a child who may not have means to buy new shirts at all reminds me that we are exactly where God wants us, and in the end it will be worth all of the struggles.

I wonder how many “spiritual t-shirts" I pass every day in our community. How many people are wearing the impact of Campo Alegría, and all of the time and prayer that has gone into the community? How many kids have come to our camps and had an experience that will last a lifetime?

I suppose that’s how God sees us. We all have t-shirts that show a history of our lives. Things that have impacted us and encouraged us in the past that shaped us into what we are today.
I guess I have a spiritual t-shirt as well from Chop Point, from when I was a camper. I suppose it would have words on it like: Love, Forgiveness and Redemption on it. There are people and experiences that God has used to shape me into the person I am today because they took the time. What an honor it is to be a part of something much bigger than we will ever see or comprehend.

Lots to be done ...

I visited the school in Buenos Aires and checked in on how they are doing. The screens on the windows have held up, the well is working and the schools paint looks pretty good. After assessing their situation, there is a need for a bathroom makeover. It is a “porta potty” style with shallow holes for the waste, and at this point I wouldn’t want to know how many fly’s go in and out and then land on the kids. The smell gets unbearable inside and there is little privacy, especially for the staff. The teachers told me that if there is anything we ever want to do to help out that situation they would gladly receive it. Since they get so much wind from the lake a windmill connected to their pump, a water tank, septic tank and some piping could get them flushable toilets. In the calm season a $160.00 dollar generator and a small pump would fill their tank every week. The wooden slats on the bathroom walls are getting beyond just paint every year and should probably be replaced sometime soon. We may be able to convince the Mayor to give a small amount per month for gasoline in the generator. The whole project would probably be around $2,500 for supplies.



I have made an American friend in San Jorge who owns a hotel a few blocks from our house. He has five horses that he keeps on his property year around and originally had bought them to ride. As most horse owners he has now decided that he’s not able to ride them as much as needed. After explaining to him what we do at Camp and that we are interested in incorporating horse back riding he suggested that we take his horses on permanent loan. He gave us two Geldings, a Mare, and two Colts along with two saddles. The horses are enough to begin a small program that hopefully will be a fun activity for the kids at camp as well as gringo mission teams passing through.

I met with Halle August last week and picked his brain on the last four or five years that he has been here. What an amazing ministry he has going on, and what a huge impact sports can have on children’s lives especially in this country. It would be great if one day Campo could have a finished baseball and soccer field available for the local community to use, as well as the use for our camps. There are many churches (in the south especially) that would love to come and run simple sports camps for a week at a time. It would be a lot of work though to level and grade the land the cattle are currently on, but of course as always, it’s nothing for God.