Nicaragua

David: Back in February Sarah and I led a Nicaragua study trip for the QERC semester students as a part of their Applied Cultural Integration course. At that time I wrote a blog entry that was never posted. We thought we shouldn't let already written material go to waste. So, if you were just absolutely dying to hear about our February trip to Nicaragua, today is your lucky day.

David(5 months ago): We recently were in Nicaragua; “beautiful and unfortunate Nicaragua” as so insightfully stated by national hero Benjamin Zeledon. It is the land of lakes of volcanoes. It is a country home to mouth watering tortillas and generous and happy people. It is a history of inspiring patriots and corrupt politicians. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and it is the perfect place to take a group of students if you want them to face history and reality that encourages a deeper look at several aspects of life.

Our group of 5 students, Sarah, and I spent a total of 11 days in Nicaragua digging into the richness of the culture, complexities of the history, and beauty of the people. After a 10 hour bus ride from the San Jose to Managua our group stayed 2 days in Managua to explore historical sites. Among these sites where the Revolutionary Plaza where the Sandinistas rolled victoriously into on their tanks when they over threw the Somoza dictatorship, the old national cathedral that is in ruins from the devastating earthquakes from the 1970’s, and the Popes’ Plaza where Pope John Paul III spoke several times during his life of service.

The highlight of these sites was Loma Tiscapa. Historically it is a military base notorious for holding political prisoners and the location of years of torture of political enemies. It is here that the U.S. Marines trained the National Guard of the Somoza regime and where Augusto Cesar Sandino had his last meal before being kidnapped and assassinated. In fact there is a very large silhouette statue of Sandino on the Loma Tiscapa hilltop that can be seen from almost every location in the capital of Managua. The students were able to engage in this history and rightfully so as it is hard to be at these locations and not be enthralled with it all as you can see how history has shaped the lives of Nicaraguans.

After our short time in Managua we headed to the rural area of Niquinohomo for a service experience and home stay at a farm called Rancho Ebenezer. Rancho Ebenezer is a Christian organic farm that is dedicated to educating rural families in subsistence farming. If a family has 1/10^th of an acre they can teach them to supply all their family's needs in a way that is ecologically friendly. There is a strong emphasis on humanity's role of creation stewardship and ecological principles. The project believes in truly investing in a family's long-term well-being and it shows by the multiple year training commitment that is given and the importance that is put on family values. This location actually is an ideal place for service teams from the U.S. and the project is looking for groups who can help out with manual labor. If you are interested in setting something like that up here is there website. (www.ranchoebenezer.org)

While working at Rancho Ebenezer our students had home stay experiences with local families who have a connection to the project. Their work day started early at 6:00 AM. The daily chores usually consisted of watering and feeding the goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and rabbits all being raised as demonstration projects for a sustainable protein source, cleaning out the pig sties, shoveling poop from multiple animals sources to use for feeding the worms that would then create good fertilizer, fertilizing the crops, harvesting foliage from the crops to feed the animals, and many other things as well. It was very educational and great experience. In the evenings the students were on their own back with the families they stayed with.

And finally, to finish our time in Nicaragua with a little relaxation we spent two days in the colonial city of Granada. It's a charming city with good restaurants and a hostel with hammocks that hit the spot.

All in all Nicaragua proved to be a very meaningful and trans-formative experience for our five students. "It was awesome", I say with a big smile on my face. The students were faced with the reality of a 3rd world culture. They lived, ate, and bathed in it all to find out that there is something very special about Nicaragua. It was fantastic to see them mentally, emotionally, and physically challenged, all which pushed them to maybe grow a little bit. Plus, Sarah and I successfully led our 1st trip to Nicaragua and felt good about it. We're excited to do it again this February.

The Wedding

Sarah: The last couple weeks I have spent in the U.S. of A. My older sister, Emily, was married to Greg Ford this past weekend in Chattanooga, TN. I flew up about a week and a half early to be of help with last-minute details, and also for some good quality sister time and bonding time with my new brother-in-law. Emily and I had a great time together, with many long days of running errands and finalizing everything before the big day. She was my maid-of-honor, and I was her matron-of-honor. We realized it had been a good number of years since the two of us had spent some quality time together, and we took advantage of our time together with lots of talking and catching up! It was also great for me to spend time with Greg, since I had only met him once over Thanksgiving last year. To get everything done, Emily and I would get up in the mornings and figure out a plan of attack for the day, put our game faces on, and go strong until meeting up with Greg for dinner. It was a lot of fun to be there during the hustle and bustle of wedding frenzy.

The rest of my family drove in the Tuesday night before the wedding and we all helped out with projects like assembling the programs and tying ribbons on the bubbles. Wednesday night we had a Gosselink Family Night, complete with Italian sausage sandwiches, games, ice cream, and walking around downtown. Though that also marked the beginning of even more busyness, it was great to have my family around. David also flew late Wednesday night, and I was really glad to see him too!

Thursday night we had a Girls’ Night Out with Emily – dinner downtown, walking around and hanging out, and spending the night in a hotel room. It was good for her to catch up with some of her friends who were coming from out of town, and good for us all to meet each other, since we all play a special role in Emily’s life but don’t all know each other well. David went out to eat with the guys that night and got to meet the groomsmen and the other usher (David was an usher as well). Since Greg is from the south, most of his friends and family have a thick southern accent. David said at one point during the dinner he realized that he could have understood a conversation completely in Spanish better than the conversation going on with such thick southern accents!

Friday Emily had a brunch for all girls who had a role in her wedding, and then we headed over to the church to begin decorating. This took us all the way up to the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner, and then all of a sudden it was the night before the big day! Greg’s 13-year old son, Hunter, was his best man, so Hunter and I got together Friday night to write our toasts together. Neither one of us was too keen on the idea of public speaking, but it was good to sit and work on them together.

And finally, Saturday came and went. Everything seemed to fly by! Emily was calm, but very excited. I stayed the night with her on Friday night and she came into my bedroom Saturday morning jumping on the bed chanting “I’m getting married today!” It was bound to be a good day. Emily said later that everything was perfect – just the way she wanted it to be. That’s a good thing to hear from the bride, after she’s spent months planning and dreaming up the perfect day! The wedding was beautiful and Emily was a radiant bride. The forecasted rain even held off, and Emily and Greg were able to drive off in their new convertible!

After a fairly short clean-up time, David and I went out to eat with my family and hung out with them the rest of the evening. They left early the next morning, but David and I didn’t fly out until Monday evening. We ended up getting together with the other usher, Ken, and his wife Renee on Sunday evening. It was great to be able to hang out with them and form a new friendship with a really neat couple. And finally, after a very long night of travel (due to fog, we landed in Panama and sat on the plane for an hour and a half before getting cleared to go back to Costa Rica), we arrived back in the country early Tuesday morning.

Tropical Storm Alma

David: We recently were hit, and hit hard, by a storm that formed over the Pacific that gradually escalated into Tropical Storm Alma. Alma is the Spanish word for soul and this storm definitely showed a lot of soul to us. Here at QERC we sustained over 15 inches of rain in three days. At one point we had 4 inches in 2 1/2 hours. Other parts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua received more than that. The Panamanian-American Highway between QERC and Cartago was closed for two days due to trees and landslides but between QERC and San Isidro it is still closed because the highway is just flat out gone in certain spots where slides took the whole thing. Apparently there were several hundred people stuck on the highway between two landslides for at least 2 days without food.

Here at QERC we endured the storm with no major damage and we were able to watch a powerful display of the force of water. The Savegre Valley was a mess. The river was so high that between here and the trail to the waterfall the river was up over the road at three places. In fact, right across from QERC the river was over the road and pounding into the bank of the property across from us. Logs striped of any kind of foliage were careening down the water on the road. The river was touching the bottom of the Hotel Savegre's bridge, about 3 feet over Fernando's bridge at Los Ranchos, and it completely took away the last swinging bridge before the big waterfall. The river was so powerful that for about 5-6 hours straight we couldn't see them but we could hear boulders under the water being pushed down the river and pounding into other boulders. Every time that would happen the whole building would feel the vibrations of the impact. It was like hundreds of little earthquakes. At one point I was outside watching the river during the height of our rainfall and I saw an Alder get ripped down up stream and it was past me in about 1 second and gone. It would have been instant, or at least guaranteed, death for anyone that fell in that river.

The storm let up on Thursday night and on Friday it was beautiful and sunny so we got out to check out the damage around the valley. Our valley road, which is our only road in and out of here, was closed for about 2 days due to trees and one big and several small landslides. We were without power for 2 days.

At QERC we were close to a few problems. At the height of the storm on Thursday, water was draining off the back property down to where the rain gauge is. There was so much water coming down that it formed a creek about 4 feet wide on our back lawn. The creek flowed to the corner of the building and split going on both sides. At the height of the rainfall we had water on all four sides of the building flowing completely against the building at about 2 inches deep. QERC was literally surrounded by a moat. The only door you could walk out without directly stepping in the creek was our apartment door. I was really worried it would come in the doors but the level started going down once it was about an inch from the bottom of the door frame. That would have been a muddy mess to clean up. The stream that was split by the building partly just flowed down the front grass area and joined other water to create a creek flowing down the road past Rolando's, Carlos's, and down to Pablo's. The water that didn't flow down there rejoined on the west side of the building and all flowed off the embankment right across from our apartment. There was so much water running off there, and also one of the gutters from the roof exits from under the ground right there as well. Unfortunately, all of that water, combined with an area that Pablo says was a lot of back fill from construction, with no large tree on it, created a fairly significant landslide into the river. This was the scariest thing for Sarah and I. The landslide slowly kept growing as the storm persisted. It is now stabilized but it is only 15 feet from the edge of the building.

Return of the Finkenbinders

Sarah: Though the busyness of the semester program is now behind us, May has continued to be full of activity and visitors. A few days after the students left, Leo and Zana Finkenbinder came to QERC with a group from Olivet Nazarene University (ONU). As you may remember, it was Leo and Zana who have the long history here in the valley and were the ones who actually built QERC. They hadn’t been back to the valley since they retired a few years ago, and Leo has since come out of retirement and is helping develop an Environmental Studies program at ONU. We were excited to have them here to follow around and pick their brains on the history and science of this valley, and a bit nervous with their return since we had made quite a few changes to the place since they’d been here.

Our visit with them was wonderful – they were complimentary toward the improvements we’ve made and the direction we are going with QERC, and we were able to learn a lot from them about their visions they originally had for the building and the way QERC was utilized. As it turns out, many of David’s ideas for the place coincide exactly with the visions Leo had, so David was able to run a lot of ideas past Leo and receive good input.

It was also a very good and much-needed visit with the Chacon family for Leo and Zana. Because of the long-standing history with Leo and Zana, it is them whom the Chacons trust and respect the most when dealing with QERC. Leo and Zana were able to see David and me as a positive addition to the staff, and in return, relay that to the Chacons. We have felt like we’ve had a good relationship with the Chacons for a while now, but with Leo and Zana here, it gave that extra confirmation, and in some ways symbolized the passing of the torch from them to us. We look forward to Leo and Zana returning with more groups to QERC in the future to continue that relationship with them.

After the ONU group was gone, Dennis Siegfried came down with a couple of professors from Oklahoma Baptist University to do a quick tour of a few places in Costa Rica, with the hopes of setting up their own trip sometime. We enjoyed having them at QERC and brainstorming with them on ways they can utilize QERC in the future.

Right after they left, we went to the airport to pick up Ted Bader. Ted is a donor and major fundraiser for QERC and has been a part of the project since it first got started. We also met up with his son, Sam, and Sam’s wife Candace. All three are here at QERC right now enjoying some relaxation time and a break from their busy schedules in the U.S.