A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

Last night, “VALENTINE DAY” or “Día de los Enamorados” I invited my wife to dine at the “Candilito Jr. (Little Candlelight Junior) restaurant. The young entrepreneurial owners had included our Logo in their promoting a lovers dinner for two, with wine, romantic music and a raffle to spend a weekend at a luxurious beach resort “Montelimar”.

It was a real walk down memory lane! Songs we listened, wrote down, sang with bursting feelings in our hearts, since we were teenagers and later on hiring guitar singers to ride in the back seat of our cars serenading our girlfriends on the driver´s side seat while slowly driving through the quiet silent streets of our early adulthood city. Believe me, we felt as young and happy again as we haven´t been so long ago.

The pleasantest surprise was that the restaurant was located in the “Mothers´ Park” near to what in my youth was the center of the government main garrisons where I was stationed as a second lieutenant but already an assistant to the Chief of the National Guard General Staff Office, in charge of planning and logistics.

I developed a very special relationship with my boss. We both were kind of dreamers/analysts of wider and macro oriented national perspectives but at the same time faithful and stronger believers in excellence and abhorrence of mediocrities.

What an intriguing coincidence between the past and the present! 40 years ago there was a pergola where this restaurant is now located.

We used to sit there for hours to analyze and discuss whatever “planned to be presented to the highest command” social welfare project we visualized it should or could be undertaken under the general scope of “Civil Affairs”.

Despite my young age I had become the head of the C-5, G-5 General Staff Section . My duty, intent and purpose was to devise such plans in accordance with the principles learned in the Army Schools I attended all over the USA undergoing specialized training related to macro analysis, planning, management, supervision and control of “nation priorities and planning, case study method” projects.

Out of those sharing and dreaming times sprouted into existence different realities in our Nicaraguan land: The 1st. Medical Company that intervened alongside the Americans in the Dominican Republic; the “Nueva Guinea rural settlements in the central north mountains; the “OPEN” or “National Emergencies Planning Organism”, antecessor of the present SINAPRED Army Emergency Relief organization, being the “OPEN 3" settlement presently known as “Sandino City” one of the last projects I planned and supervised before becoming a guest instructor in a US Army Training Center, and later on a hospital administrator and hospital rebuilder in my country.

You never know how your actions will influence or affect other peoples future. For example, the OPEN 3 settlement became the birth place of a young engineer who has recently made a technical analysis of our present Arms of Love homes in Jinotepe. He was born in a family, among the around fifty thousand people we relocated from more than “7 miles long” shores of the Managua lake in the sixties. This was an effort to move them nearer to the planned industrial region fed by geotermal energy and at the same time to prevent the development of what is presently known as the biggest dump in Central America LA CHURECA where so many relief and compassions activities are poured by all types of institutions and Christian groups, as water drops falling into highly hot irons.

As time passed the pergola became a restaurant we visited from time to time, still immersed in our government and military years circles and activities. It was the same place, modified surroundings, happy and pleasant memories and events, and the path of our lives threading always farther, wider, never boring or limited to a dreary way of living

Then, political exile, missionary years, unexpected experiences, newer goals and projects, Christian TV stations management, Bible College planning, interesting missions projects all over the world, to close the circle by coming back to become involved with another far ranging project, the Arms of Love Nicaragua project.

What started as just a children´s home in a slummy neighborhood already has become a deluxe 2 different locations. What started as feeding and lodging and Christian care and orientation is starting to expand to adapt to the peculiar Nicaraguan idiosyncrasies and a living laboratory for the specific needs of the growing up children that the Lord is placing under our diligent care and protection.

I surely know hurdles, mistakes, failures and successes will always be the order of the day. I surely know you will never be able to please everyone who cross your path as every person´s perspective is different from one another. But the Lord knows our heart and our resolve to tackle whatever comes our way because our motivations are greater and wider than any opportunistic circumstance.

My dream is to see another worthy dream and vision becoming a successful life changing reality. This I think could very well be our last challenge as I see the time for a well deserved warrior´s rest looming in the horizon.

IT IS SO INTERESTING HOW THE CYCLES OF LIVES INTERTWINE THEMSELVES AROUND PEOPLE, PLACES AND CIRCUMSTANCES, UNDER THE LOVING GUIDANCE AND LEADING OF OUR SAVIOR AND LORD.