Heather, Pioneer school and Chepita

The highlight of the past few months for us was a visit from Heather.
Even when you really love where you are and how great your life is,
things can become routine. It was a real shot in the arm to have
Heather reminding me how incredible our lives in Nicaragua really are.

She was able to visit almost all of our Bible studies, including this family. Maria Luz (the mother) has been inactive for years. She didn't know how to read until she met Jehovah's Witnesses. Her study began as an excuse to continue her reading lessons but within a few months it was enough to help her get her zeal back to the point of attending and commenting at meetings. This month she'll also be turning in her first service report in 9 years. Two of her daughters are also progressing well.

Heather showed tremendous linguistic skills in both Sign Language and Spanish. Here she's supervising a Sign Language lesson at a small "boarding school" for deaf children. There are about 14 children that come from inpoverished families. In most cases they only see their families once a year. After visiting them on Saturdays we take 4 or 5 of them with us to the Sign Language bookstudy.

Of course a trip to Nicaragua wouldn't be complete without some sort of close encounter with wildlife. The night before Heather left we went on a sunset tour of Volcan Masaya which included entering a bat cave one by one and spending a few minutes in the dark with thousands of furry, flying creatures that, thanks to their incredible sonic abilities, don't collide with your face.

Speaking of wildlife if anyone knows what this little creature is let me know. In my experience it's the only insect I've seen that seems to have a head on both ends.

Going back a few months, we wanted you to see a picture of Andrew's pioneer school class.

I've also included a picture of

what can happen in hot weather when

you run out of plain white undershirts. Unintentional advertising.

Some free advertising for Design;) We're still willing to run a central american office by the way;

The tract campaign went well. I was even able to do a little riverside witnessing. Fortunately we had some 4X4 help to get to the other side.

Last but certainly not least we wanted to slowly start introducing you to more people in our congregation. This is Josefa Dominguez (better known as Chepita). She's the adopted grandmother of everyone I know. A 70ish going on 20 chipper addition to our service groups. She's still a regular pioneer and backbone of the congregation. We just didn't realize what a cardshark she is until I caught her in the act at a recent congregation party.;)

That's it for now. Miss everyone loads, hope to hear from you soon.