After looking through my journal entries for the two remaining journal entries, I have decided to compress them into a single post. We spent the last 2 days traveling and debriefing, so while it was 48 hours, it mostly consisted of sitting and talking or sleeping on a plane. Also, we had our film screening last night, and I was unable to get my post up last night. Thank you for going on this journey with us! While this does NOT signal the end of our blog, it certainly means I'm out of entries to share and that we'll just have to look elsewhere for fresh material.
Friday, August 9th: This entry is a little further after the fact, so some details may have faded.
This is the day we began our journey home. The day started early; we left around 7 am for the Bluefields airport. Everyone was tired after packing the night before (and or girl talk), so many people slept on the flight. It was a bigger plane (i.e., more than 12 seats on it), but the landing was still amazingly smooth! I've flown a good bit, and the pilots in Nicaragua made some of the smoothest landings I have seen.
After the flight but before lunch, we visited a seamstress shop in Managua that helped employ (2) former dump scavengers. It was a small operation built on a corner of the redeveloped dump. We ordered t-shirts, which they will send up via some later group coming back to the States. After a delicious lunch, we went to a market to get souvenirs. It was a pretty obvious tourist area, but it was fun to wander through, see some trinkets, and spend some time thinking about what various family members would like or could use.
After about an hour shopping, we piled into the bus and headed out again for an exotic location. We spent the afternoon in Laguna de Apoyo, a (huge) lake inside a dormant volcano! It was gorgeous, the water was very slightly salty but extremely clear. Because we're incredibly responsible people, we had contests to hold heavy volcanic rocks and see how far we could walk into the water before letting go. I think Logan won that one. We finished the afternoon by having a nice dinner (with fancy smoothies) up at a resort restaurant before heading to the hotel near the Managua airport.
We got to the hotel around 8 PM, when we said goodbye to Logan. Before heading home, he was going to visit some of the kids at the OrphaNetwork facility in Managua. We so extremely thankful for all that Logan did with and for us this week! Beyond acting as our liaison, he was our interpreter, our group facilitator, and our friend.
Following goodbyes, we had an extensive debrief time. We were all pretty exhausted, but were able to have some serious discussion around what we had seen and done throughout the week. Then, we all collapsed. I snapped a great picture of May asleep on a couch. Classic Facebook material. I think we were all loath to end our last night, but tiredness won in the end.
Saturday, August 10th: Today we went home. Where previous days were long but satisfying, Saturday was just a long day. We flew back to the States on an early 7:30 AM flight.
We woke at 4:45 AM and made our way to the hotel lobby by 5:15 AM. We had to get across a busy made our way across the road (think frogger) and into the airport. After about 30 minutes spent on ticketing, we went to the small gift niches for last minute purchases. They were 10 feet deep and about 3 feet wide, filled to the brim with everything from t-shirts to wood carvings. We also all bought matching wrist-pieces (I refuse to call them bracelets) to remind ourselves about this trip once we get back to our normal lives.
Our flight out of Managua was delayed (I think weather related), so we had more than 30 min before boarding. Many of us went and found some food or wandered around the airport. It had a total of about 5 gates; for comparison, Atlanta has 207 gates and Dulles has 123 gates.
NOTE FOR FUTURE GET TRIPPERS: DO NOT LET SHIREEN CHOOSE YOUR SEATS!!! For the 3rd straight time, we were in the last or next to last row, with Shireen at least 4 rows away from the rest of us (ostensibly for a "window seat"). We had rows with windows that opened on the engine casing and even on row with no window, whatsoever. Shireen claims it was an accident, or the doing of the travel agent. Riiiiight.
At the Atlanta airport, we split from Jon, who was going to see family in California. The delay in our first flight meant that we had little time between, only getting to our gate about 15 min prior to boarding. The flight was fine, and we arrived at Dulles about on time. We prayed one last time and went our separate ways at baggage claim, after boyfriends and family picked up the young ladies.
What an amazing trip! God was at work and changing lives both in Nicaragua and on our team. We hope to keep the passion in our lives through an upcoming beans and rice "fast" and possibly a new bible study.
Hindsight View: To echo my last paragraph, what an amazing trip! We laughed, we cried, we were humbled, and we were impressed. We are so proud of our brothers and sisters in Nicaragua and grateful that we had the opportunity to work alongside them. I know that it will be difficult to keep passion going and that memories fade with time, but I'm glad that we, the team, made a pact to do our Compassion Diet. We're striking while the iron is hot and giving others a peek into the trip that (hopefully) was life-changing for us.
I'm glad that you chose to take this journey with us, please let me take this opportunity to encourage you one more time to consider giving. You can give directly at www.tfcanglican.org/get.
No comments:
Post a Comment