StoryTime :)

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 20^th 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! :)