URGENT NEED FOR CHINESE

This could be your new home!!

Just wanted to share some exciting news a friend of mine told me about.  You may have read in the news how Nicaragua has started a project to open a canal connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean.  It'll be another Panama canal, so to speak.  Well, this presents us Witnesses with an amazing opportunity.  

You see, China is financing the work and has sent hundreds of workers to the Nicaragua/Costa Rican border for a five-year long project.  In response, we already have friends here from Pennsylvania who have learned Chinese and are ready to meet the spiritual needs of these workers.  Could you come too?  The ones I know of are working from San Juan del Sur which is right on the Pacific, has great surfing, and a Spanish and English congregation already established for your meetings.  There's also a Chinese group in the capital, Managua, for you to send your addresses to if you can only come for a short time.

IT'S A GIRL!

Last week some dear, dear friends of mine invited me to their baby shower.  After many disappointments, they will be welcoming Miss Dayana Shelina to the world (with Jehovah's help) in March.  Soooo happy for them!  The party was in Granada and it was really nice to catch up with old friends and relax a bit.

Shelina trying to feed baby food to Alixe while blindfolded.  Things disintigrated quickly...

Diana with her own Mami, Pilar, who is dying to welcome her first grandbaby!!

What?!  You've never been to a baby shower that broke out into a dance party?  You've clearly never been in Nicaragua...here, EVERYTHING has the potential to break out into a dance party :)  And let me just say, when there's no boys around these chicas can GET DOWN!!

CALEB BRINGS SMILES

I'm baaaaaaaccccckkkkk!!!  Now whether you're clapping or groaning, the point is that I've got my new computer (I owe you big time, Andrea) and blogging again!  There's so much I want to catch you guys up on so you're going to be seeing a lot of regular posts, I promise.

I first wanted to share with you a fun congregation activity we did together back in November.  In Nicaragua, school vacation runs from the end of November through the beginning of February.  A couple fellow pioneers and I decided we wanted to take advantage of the vacation to do a kids party and catch everyone up on the Become Jehovah's Friend series.  95% of the homes here don't have Internet, it's available through phone by minutes only, and otherwise, one must go to a cyber (computer shop; you remember those from the '90s, right?) which not everyone has money for.  So I downloaded all the videos and songs and we invited all the kids and most of the adult publishers from our rural territory (where there's no access to cybers) to come to Clara's house and get to know them.  We had such a blast!  Most of the kids had only ever seen the Caleb video that was released at the Regional Convention over 2 years ago; my heart clenched a bit to see the kids mouth along with almost every word of that first video; they knew it by heart!!!

And to make it seem like a real party we had cupcakes, ice cream, sweet breads, fresco, and tostadas.  That is NOT common for Nica parties...usually some chips and soda and everyone feels like they've gotten something special.  Then a very generous sister put together "fun bags" for all the kids full of loud toys to annoy their parents.  You can tell from the kids' faces below how they felt about it all.

Selene and Clara, fellow pioneers and party planners