Hi I’m Bethany how r u? I’m losing my mind. Help. Nah JK I
was just looking at this blank page and going hmmm what should I say to fill
this page that people actually would enjoy reading. Well currently I am
listening to the two girls I live with discuss supper and different recipes. Ok
so I haven’t really told you guys lately what I have been up lately. I guess my
last story was the volcano. Ok so prep yourself for some stories whether
exciting or interesting or amusing or boring I guess that would be up to your
opinion. We have been keeping ourselves fairly busy over the last two weeks.
July 10
The Wednesday after our volcano trip we spent the morning
handing out tracks and invitations in a small town called San Poncho. The
invitations were for a bible school we did Friday but that’s another story.
Anyway this town was way back in the boonies but oh was it a cute town. One
stretch had these adorable little brick houses and they were so adorable. Some
had little fences and others didn’t. We drove through a couple big fields and
that’s when I was like wow! Ok imagine with me a brown empty fields but
everywhere you look its volcanoes, In front of you, behind you, to the left
& to the right. It looks awesome! Well we paired up. Brandon, Aaron and
Krista and then Me Jason and Lanita and we went all over that little spread out
town. When you approach a house what you normally do is call out Buenas and
that normally brings someone to the gate. I was kinda shy. Yes people! I
Bethany Fuhrman was shy. I barely said a word and kind of just shadowed Lanita
who looked like she knew what she was doing. All in all we handed out around 60
lil packets and did a lot of walking. We got back home around lunch time just
in time for a new experience. Chicken soup, Complete with chicken feet and
plantains and different things. But all
I can say is hallelujah there is one less rooster in the world. I have learned
to not really like roosters ok well I never have but I don’t really enjoy their
crowing at 4 am! Then around 4ish we took some of the Sunday school girls who
had learned a certain amount of verses to a very heavenly place in all this
heat. yea you know it! The ice cream store! Yum! Eskimo, una irresistible tentación. Translation: an
irresistible temptation! You got that right! :)
July 11
I worked up at the church all morning picking the stones out
of the grass while the guys macheteed the grass. And the kids and I were
wheelbarrowing dirt all over the place. Hard work! ;) You should see the place
where Aaron and Brandon were machetying (and no I don’t believe that is a
legitimate word). It looks amazing! We decided to leave early for Leon and stop
and get Tacos. So we all piled in the truck and headed for Leon and more often than
not when we “eat out” we are getting food from like little food stands that are
all over but this place was an actual sit down restaurant. With the exception
that the food choice is much slimmer and the service is much faster. We had the
choice between tacos and repochetas (cheese rolled up in a tortilla and fried
kinda tastes like mozzarella sticks) and they came with cabbage and cream. YUM
:) I like Nicaraguan food! Well most of it anyway. From there we went to the Leon church for the
Wednesday night service and afterward YAY I got to FaceTime with my family! I
get to every Thursday night after church because they have Wi-Fi there. It’s so much fun seeing my family even if it
is only through video chat. Then after we leave church it’s off to the store to
stock up for the week.
July 12
Bible School! Yep we did have a bible school while we were down
here. It was only a one day thing though. I already told you guys about the
little town we did it in. San Poncho. We were planning on around 70 people and
that was actually probably how many we had. At first it was only like 4 people
but then people started arriving. We started at maybe 9:30am with a bunch of
songs then the Leon team did a skit about the birth of Christ and also a puppet
show on the story of the Good Samaritan. In between the two
stories they did a craft
involving pipe cleaners and after the stories we played flying Dutchman. Then
it was our turn. *teeth chattering* We started out with a skit about Lazarus
and went onto a flannel graph about the death and resurrection of Jesus. And
our craft was a coloring page then we handed out glu glu (a fruity drink in a
bag) and el pan (bread made with sugar on top) and it was over just like that.
July 13
My first ever street meeting. For the street meeting we went
to a town about an hour away called Chichigalpa. Cool name right!? The street
meeting was held in a really cute park. The guys set up the generator and mikes
and we sang for a while and then Delmar preached a sermon. Meanwhile we were
handing out tracts. It’s really refreshing handing out tracts to the people
around here because they take them from you and actually read them. Then we
sang some more and we were finished. There were also some sad sights in the
park like the man directly behind us who was laying half on and off the
sidewalk curled up in a little ball who had no shame in going the bathroom in
the middle of the park. I’ll be honest that broke my heart. Was there no hope
in life to him?
July 15
One thing I have grown to love here is spending time with
the Nolt family that is living down here. The young family have stolen my
heart. I am gonna miss them dreadfully when I leave. This Monday morning I
spent the morning helping them which I really enjoyed. I just did lil things
like hanging out laundry, doing Ava’s hair and cleaning the boys floor and oh
yea selling sticky buns. Megan and I went out to be a little sales people. We
have a little route and we go around shouting El Pan! At first we were both a
little quiet and shy but then we egged each other on. We passed Aaron working
at the church and he informed us we had to be a little louder and more nasally.
Then it was on to the market for to finish selling the sticky buns and to shop
around the little town of Malpiasillo. It was much fun and man is there a lot
of shoes and purses for sale. But of course there are barely any shoes my size.
Made me wish my feet were a lil smaller. ;) Before we left Christine got us
orange juice. Now stop! Don’t think legit orange juice. No, no, no this orange
juice is divine! :) It is a really sweet and just amazing! And then another new
experienced happened, I got a bike taxi ride with Megan. Oh so fun! I was kind
of afraid I was gonna fall off though but I didn’t! After that around 3ish us
“singles” headed off the beach! We met the Leon crew there. It was so much fun.
Most of us didn’t go swimming although two of the guys disappeared up the coast
and went swimming for a while. Meanwhile we gabbed for a while until finally
after the guys got the net set up and we found and/or fixed a vball we played a
few games of volleyball before supper. I’ll be honest it’s the first time I
have ever played volleyball on the beach. It’s much more challenging! Big Jason
(there are two Jasons I call the older one big Jason and the other one little
Jason) had dug a big hole and had a fire going. They had stuck our 3 mountain
pie makers in the fire to purify them and um… hehe did you know mountain pie
makers melt?!?!? One was perfectly fine except the hinge was broken but the
other two only had one working side. So supper came a little slower than
intended. But it was still delicious! Hmmm pizza mountain pies! Wow I wish you
could have been able to have been there! After supper Amber Wantz and I took a
long walk along the beach and we couldn’t help but just MARVEL at the beauty of
God’s wonderful creation! Down here is gets dark earlier around 7ish actually.
So by this time is was basically dark and the moon just made crests of the
waves just glow! It just made you want to stay there and just worship God! It
was magnificent! No words I say are gonna be able to describe. Simply Glory be
to God!
*Next several days were pretty relaxed especially with
Krista sick in bed.*
July 18
Today was fun. Ok so I absolutely love spoiling my lil
sister so having 10 year old Megan Nolt, the eldest daughter of the family
stationed down here, around is so fun. I decided I would spoil her a little so
we went out on the town. She knows Spanish pretty well too so that was a big
help. We biked into town and shopped for a while and bought a few things and I
bought her orange juice and then we went and got Ice cream from the Eskimo place
and went and bugged Brandon for a little. Later when I was facetiming my lil
sister I asked her if she was jealous and she was like no because she gets it
all the time. Sigh I have spoiled her too much. Oh well I love it!
July 19
Ok so yesterday was Amber’s 20th Birthday. HAPPY
BIRTHDAY!! I really like birthdays! It’s a day designated to celebrate the life
of someone and I really enjoy doing that!! Anyway to celebrate her birthday all
of us girls went out to a pretty nice restaurant that overlooked the beach and
had a pretty nice selection of food. Their fish are huge! But if you know me
you know exactly what I ordered. Yep you know it I got shrimp! :) It was a
really nice night to just to hang out and get to know each other and of course
celebrate Amber! We love you girl! Afterwards we went back to the Leon girls’
house for cake and when I say cake I ain’t talking normal chocolate cake no
this is an Amber special. Multilayered chocolate cake with divine icing! Lol
Delicious! Mouth watering yet? Ya gotta love girl’s night out!
July 20
Yay! Girls trip to Asososca! Yeah, go ahead try and
pronounce it! :) We took about 10 of the teen girls from out at the Palmarita
and drove to Asososca and let me tell you that was one PACKED vehicle! 13 of us
in all! But I really enjoyed it! I’ll be honest it’s kind of hard connecting to
the people down here because I can barely communicate with them. But this trip really gave me an opportunity
to do just that! Yara is a 16 year old girl that I connected pretty well with.
She knows a little bit of English so between my limited Spanish and her limited
English we made it work. She was a real sweetheart! Ok so you’re probably
curious what Asososca is. Well it’s a really big gorgeous crater lake. When we got there we hiked up to a little
cute shake like over look and hung out there for a while. We sang a ton of
songs and learned a few new ones too. Ok well technically all these songs are
new to me. Many have familiar tunes but new words anyway we also had a little
lesson and then It was time for the hike down to the lake. It was so pretty!
One downside… MUCHO MOSQUITOES! Gah! *shivers* every second I felt another one
bite and at one point I had stopped to rest when we hiking and I thought oh
goodness I stopped in a swarm of gnats but uh nope! It was a legit group of
mosquitoes. Oye ve! But I didn’t let them ruin my time! Nope we had a blast! We
didn’t go swimming partly because most of the girls don’t know how to swim and
mostly because they moms would have been very upset. After a while we hiked the
very steep treck back up. On the hike I got to know another girl pretty good.
Her name is Rosibel and she is 19 years old. We had a blast together. She just
was a trucker on the hike so I started calling her Mona (monkey) and she turned
to me and in English said no I am a Lady then gave me a big grin. When we
finally got up to the top I resolved when I get home I am gonna get in better
shape especially after I found out that one of the girls ran the whole way up.
Lol anyway after we got back to the overlook we had lunch which consisted of
birthday rice. Rice made with tons of lil goodies: hotdog bits, raisins, and a
couple other things. Yum! And boy can those tiny girls pack away rice! After
finally connecting with some of the girls it was really sad for me to go and
drop them off knowing it was probably the last time I would see them. When we
got back we cleaned the church and then crashed and rested for the rest of the
night.
July 22
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETHANY!! You’re an awesome Sister in law!!
Love ya girl! J
Today was awesome! Hmm wondering why? Well cuz it was spent
shopping of course! :) Souvenir shopping! Yay! Lanita and I spent the day
shopping in Leon with the Nolt family. I found a bunch of little goodies :) but
I shall not say what all I got on here. They gotta be surprises for the
people!! Although I will try and describe the market, Hmmm one word packed!
Little stands everywhere and everyone vying for your attention! And if you just
glance for more than a second at their stand you were suddenly surrounded by
the shop’s people asking if they could help you. At one purse store I thought
she was gonna bring me every purse she had although it made for a good laugh.
It was a fun day all in all and it was fun giving Krista a little show of what
I got when we came home.
Well I must say if you have read this far Kudos to you! I am
writing this on my word document and it says I am up to 4 pages and 2,587 words!
Wowzers maybe a little on the long side! Well tomorrow bright and early we
leave for Waslala and we got a 6 hours trip ahead of us! Prayers appreciated
for travel and health! Thanks! Love y’all! :)
