Nicaragua - part of the journey

Good news, really, great news. We were awarded a small grant from Caring Connection for Squirmy's adoption! (I may try to post more about Caring Connections later) Part of completing the grant awarding process (term I just made up) is to submit our Adoption Journey Story, which I started writing tonight....then I got distracted by thinking about our trip to Nicaragua last summer right after we completed our adoption training class. And we have two wonderful friends about to travel to Nicaragua this month - so you should pray for them and the people they will be helping.


I wanted to share some photos from our trip last July and how the people we met are a part of our Adoption Journey Story.


Bethany (our adoption agency) holds two day training classes for prospective adoptive families. We finished the last day of adoption training (in Orlando) and went straight to our preparation meeting for Nicaragua (we were flying out the next day). We were a bit late and our pastor shared with the group why - of course we hadn't told anyone except our pastors, so we were a bit confused when everyone stared at us when we walked in, then starting offering congratulations! It was actually a relief and encouragement how excited everyone was for us.

Walking through the community to the church

The women from the local church who helped with Bible School were wonderful. All smiles, and very hard working. I will never forget helping them make treat bags, them teaching me to stretch the plastic on one edge of the opening so you could tie off the bag (it's more difficult than it sounds), and me answering their questions about children with news of infertility and hope of adoption - I had come from a much wealthier community to help their community, and they looked at me with such sympathy and compassion. Their reaction - immediate understanding of the pain - was very significant for me. 

The Church Building

I probably don't have to explain that I was tempted to sneak a small child or two back in my carry on luggage. Although, one child did bite R. Which was hilarious. 

Some homes near the Church Building

We did spend one day as tourists and got to see a very large lake (I'm sorry, I forgot the name of the lake). It was rather beautiful. And, there were homes on tiny islands.

Big Lake

One of the islands on the lake had monkeys! Sure, this is completely off topic of our adoption story, but it's a monkey. And now I can say I've become distracted from the distraction of my original task....

Monkey on an island