JUST WHAT LOVE DOES!

Just how a few hours of genuinely given love
can change the way you look at life!

This time my words will be short and concise.
The photos convey the message!

October 12th. 2007

9 a.m. Our visiting Christian friends are playing with our children

9. a.m. 2 Supervisors from the Government Ministry MIFAMILIA
come to officially entrust 3 young children to our care.
Later on they will go with us to our homes in Jinotepe
to personally check where they are going to be placed

The children are scared! My wife tries to make them feel at ease

Can you see the look in their faces?

1 p.m. On the road to Jinotepe! The children still do not know what is going on!

4 p.m. They just start to relax

feeling the loving care of their future tutor mother

7 p.m. They have already started singing and praising the Lord
They were already chirping!
And we had not yet gone to the beach!

They had found a Christian home!
Blessed be the Lord!

¡ENLOQUECED! GO M.A.D!

DARE TO GO AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

In my yesterday posting I defined myself as an unrepentant dreamer.
I must add that it is impossible for me to encapsulate dreams
in just a few words and images!
In my youth if you could not talk at least half an hour
about a subject you did not know anything about it.

Now, if you do not rap or summarize everything in a minute
you are told the span of attention to you is irremediably over.
I refuse to believe it. To make a difference you have
to dedicate your whole life to it.

Back in 1968 as a young military officer I had the opportunity
to relocate 60 thousand people from the shores of our Managua lake
to what it was known as OPEN 3
(O=Organism for, P=Planning, E=Emergencies relief, N=at National level).
Just 2 weeks ago, a young engineer, a friend of Bud Skibitze, our board´s treasurer,
came to make a technical evaluation of our homes.

During the conversation it came out he was born

in the OPEN 3
to a family I had relocated THERE in 1968.

I dared to go M.A.D. and here was a difference in one person´s life!

Yesterday, Cat Sandor, a young volunteer

who is teaching English
to our girls wrote that sentence on the blackboard.

I could not resist going to my files to meditate if I am still daring to go M.A.D.
It is up to you, my friends, to decide if we
(Gladys, I, our staff, volunteers, donors, sponsors),
because in this I am not alone, are we daring so!

What I see is a future Nicaraguan middle class on the making,
coming up from the ranks of the dispossessed, abused and abandoned!
With your support! With your donations! With your unselfish dedication!

Blessed be the Lord! Thanks for giving us the whole spectrum
of the future Nicaraguan leaders
to love, to nurture, to help them become
what they rightfully dream to be!

From the younger ones

To the rest of them in Jinotepe

To the older girls in Las Palmas home in Managua

To the ones who are already entering college
with the support of our donors.

Are we daring to GO M.A.D.?

IT IS FOR YOU TO SAY SO AND JOIN US!

IT´S A WONDERFUL ENDEAVOR, BELIEVE ME!

WHAT DOES UNSELFISH LOVE REALLY MEAN?

Not too long ago someone tried to compare levels and depths

of love trying to determine who loved more or loved best.

I had to say to myself…

how can you really measure love?

You love or you don´t! Period!

I was a lonely child myself!

I had not financial problems at all and I was surrounded

by a middle class respected family

whose members always gave me what I wanted!

But I did not grow up with my pa and my ma.

They were independent minded and wanted to live their lives

assuming that my grandfather would give me

whatever I could ever need. And he did!

But he could not give me the love I missed so much!

These children were refused all things!

If you had the opportunity to fill that void in their lives…

would you walk away?

Would you serve them because it is a Christian thing to do

and at the same time an opportunity

to feel you are doing something for God?

But only in your terms?

No! that´s not love! It is just a finely refined

selfishness and self righteousness!

Because… how could you resist wanting to wipe out

that sadness in their eyes?

They become happy and chirping birds with just

a real feeling of love in our hearts for them!

And they understand it and feel it and say it!

It is amazing how they dig under our skin

and innocently say if you are real or not.

I have been blessed by the Lord with a wife who for 45 years

has walked alongside me, the unrepentant dreamer!

And she loves what we call our grandchildren

as much as we love our biological ones. The Lord has also given us faithful staff and dedicated sponsors! Our friends feel it and come to share time with us and them! They surely know who loves them!

A DAY TO REMEMBER!

Very recently our dear friend Galen Yoder, his family

and some of their friends

visited us in October as they always do.

And as always rain was the order of the days.

We had 52 days of rain in Nicaragua.

Waiting for the rain to stop they painted, repaired, played,

shared God and their experiences with our children,

but there was something to remember.

A day to go to the beach!

Our bus has just gone through the gates when it got mired in the mud.!

We all pushed back and forth for about an hour

until a 4 wheel drive pickup driver

took the bus out of the mud with his vehicle winch.

And then off to the beach!

All muddy but happy and with something to remember!

All of it made me remember my missionary days

with YWAM during a trip to Mexico,

where we were forced to stay a whole week

in the Indian little town of Tuxpan,

waiting for 2 tires for our bus to be imported from the USA.

They were not available locally.

One of our missionary girls had to fly all the way down

from Arkansas

with the two tires as her only baggage!

Thanks God, this time we only had to spend one hour

pushing and laughing!

Our younger children were the ones

who enjoyed it the most!

Specially our five younger girls!