MY NICA FAMILY

This post is a long time coming and I apologize for that. I wanted to introduce you to the family I'm living with. Drumroll please....

So first there's Alicia, the matriarch. She's very motherly towards me....she never wants me to work around the house, is always telling me to take a nap and eat healthy, and is always checking in on me. It's very comforting :) She treats Ollie like part of the family too, and that makes me feel good. She's a seamstress by trade although now she just does work for friends. Before the assembly she tailored a dress she had for me so I had something new--sweet, huh? She's married to Julio, but I haven't met him yet. He's been in San Francisco caring for his elderly mother. He is not a brother but supposedly very easy-going and an animal-lover as well.

Edwin and Carmen come next. They're 27 and 28 respectively and the married couple in the house; Edwin is Alicia's son. Carmen comes from Esteli in the north of the country, and they've been married 5 years. Edwin teaches English and is always running new phrases by me; ahem, some of which I have to explain to him never to repeat again. He's the spiritual head of the family and directs our family worship night etc....very well, by the way. I'm impressed with his questions and line of reasoning frequently. Carmen is 100% sweet and is one of my new best friends here. Some of my favorite times with her is right before lunch when we walk to the store to buy what we need to cook. We're alone for a minute, and we always have very nice chats. Like probably the 2nd week I was here I teased her that at the English convention Geni Ogando (the sister who helped me choose Granada and arranged this housing for me) was telling me "I know Carmen is just thrilled to have you in the house" and I had to tell Geni "I don't know because Carmen's never told me what she thinks of me!". I was just teasing her but later that evening she came up to my room and got all choked up telling me that the next day I can tell Geni that how she really feels is that Jehovah sent me to them. She told me it was encouraging to her and Edwin that I was living here with them and they would make whatever arrangements necessary to make sure I could stay as long as I wanted to here. Isn't that nice?

That leaves Ervin. He's 19 and dating a sister named Eunice from Matagalpa in the north. They've been seeing each other about 10 months now, and according to him, she's "the one." So I may be writing about her as a new member of the household soon! Ervin reminds me so much of my brother in all the good ways...he wears crazy tee-shirts, is always teasing me, and talks in these crazy voices all the time. I think because of him I've been thinking about my brother a lot here. I didn't even put it all together until the other night. We were talking about our families and I said I've been thinking about Mark a lot and wasn't sure why. Carmen told me "because of the boys." Then it just clicked. Her brother was recently disfellowshipped as well and she told me the boys give her the same feelings. It's nice to be understood....especially through tears.

So now you guys can put faces with names.