There is a lot of processing about Nicaragua that still needs to be done, but that will take a very long time.For now I can share with you some special things that brought my heart to life and ripped me to pieces all at once. That is the hard thing of Nicaragua. My heart living and breaking all at once. Falling in love with the people, with the sounds, with the culture, with the pace.. and then being thrust back into the real world while trying to make sense of what God just showed you.
We arrived in Managua around 9:30pm Saturday night and walked into the doors of the mission house shortly before 11pm. We were fed rice and some sort of beef something with vegetables we didn't recognize.
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| The bus ride to the Mission House from the air port, it felt like coming home. |
We were given instructions to be ready to go by 7:15am and let go for the night. I showered one last normal shower and crawled into my bed.
I was very sick when I started the trip. I was congested, I had no voice and my ears failed to clear on the airplane and I was almost as deaf as I was mute. I communicated a lot with pointing and gesturing and whispering. I tried to find ways to be thankful for it. I wondered what the Lord wanted me to learn by not being fully healthy before heading out into the village. I missed my voice for a lot of reasons.
As someone who speaks constantly, I had to learn to be content to just listen to the excited chatter of those around me since I had no voice to contribute my own excited words. Even cheering and letting out a little "woohoo!" at our arrival to the Mission House was impossible. But I knew in my heart that only the Lord need to be made known of my excitement, and I was thankful the Lord knew how happy I was even though I could not express it in any other form besides a smile. My vocal chords didn't even work for laughing. I had sat next to a kid from Germany on our flight from Houston to Managua and the Flight Attendants couldn't make out anything I was attempting to express when she asked what I would like to drink. The German kid figured out I wanted orange juice and communicated that for me. And I was thankful. Fully aware that the Lord would use me as his hands and feet and I didn't need a voice anyways.
Anyways, Sunday morning arrived and we put on our village clothes, drank our coffees, and prepared to leave. Two years ago in Nicaragua I had made friends with a translator who has kept up with me on facebook ever since. A month ago I had asked him if there was fresh Guava in Nicaragua. Due to his busy schedule he was slow to replying. But I was overwhelmed with joy when he showed up at the mission house Sunday morning. I was going to set my breakfast plate on a table when I heard, "Miss Kohl! I have a present or you." I turned to see Jarib who went into the kitchen and came out with a round, green fruit lookin' object in a plastic bag. He had brought me a guava. He wasn't able to go on our trip with us this year because of his studies at the university, but I was so touched that he came to bring me a guava in the 10 minutes he had to see us before leaving to church.
And just like that, I accepted the guava and he left without saying goodbye.
We met with our translators, most of whom we know from previous trips and felt like only a day or two had passed since we'd seen them last. They sat with us for breakfast and we asked after their lives, their families, their children. I still didn't have much of a voice, but I let those around me ask the questions and I smiled at the joy of it.
Around 8:30am we were on the bus, headed to our village: Pueblo Nuevo. I sat by one of our team pastors and the drive was very easy. The road was paved the whole way and the landscape was beautiful! We arrived to the village around 11:30am and began unloading the trucks right away. We arrived in two buses and two large trucks, a little smaller than a full semi. We began unloading the trucks of our food, our beds, water, and everything else.
It was about 98F and I was pretty off balance since my ears were still not cleared and my head pressure was intense and I was shivering from all of the bus windows being open. When I went to make my bed and lay down a little, two of my teammates were in our classroom building making their beds. When they saw me walk in they immediately asked if I was 'OK' and when I told them I was slightly woozy and needed to lie down they dropped all they were doing with their own beds and set to work on mine. They wiped down as much of the dirt off of it as possible and added a little plastic cover that they had brought before placing my sheets on for me. That is how my team is. Everyone is forever looking out for everyone else. Everyone cares for everyone else and will drop everything to make sure everyone is ok. I rested briefly before heading to the main tent to put together bags of rice and beans for the families we would see. Around 3pm we did our first service and began seeing our first round of patients.
My friend Jessica and I were assigned to work in the Dental Clinic. I was a little afraid of that at first since neither of us handle blood very well and I knew we would see plenty of that. We had several patients that first day and were at work until 5pm at least. I don't remember it very well as the days began to blend together. But we did have a very young patient, not more than 6 years old probably, who was so afraid at the pain and everything else that she had to be held down by 5 people. The screaming and wailing from the child could be heard from just about anywhere in the compound and it instilled a good amount of fear in our future young patients.
My job mostly consisted of me holding a flashlight while the tooth extraction surgery took place and then washing the tools after the surgery and discarding the used needles. Our training was brief, but it was all we needed. The most difficult part was getting the needles off of the syringe without getting poked by them. We had two dentists, one from Nicaragua and one from the U.S. Between the two of them we performed 122 surgeries in 4 days with over 130 teeth pulled.
As someone who speaks constantly, I had to learn to be content to just listen to the excited chatter of those around me since I had no voice to contribute my own excited words. Even cheering and letting out a little "woohoo!" at our arrival to the Mission House was impossible. But I knew in my heart that only the Lord need to be made known of my excitement, and I was thankful the Lord knew how happy I was even though I could not express it in any other form besides a smile. My vocal chords didn't even work for laughing. I had sat next to a kid from Germany on our flight from Houston to Managua and the Flight Attendants couldn't make out anything I was attempting to express when she asked what I would like to drink. The German kid figured out I wanted orange juice and communicated that for me. And I was thankful. Fully aware that the Lord would use me as his hands and feet and I didn't need a voice anyways.
Anyways, Sunday morning arrived and we put on our village clothes, drank our coffees, and prepared to leave. Two years ago in Nicaragua I had made friends with a translator who has kept up with me on facebook ever since. A month ago I had asked him if there was fresh Guava in Nicaragua. Due to his busy schedule he was slow to replying. But I was overwhelmed with joy when he showed up at the mission house Sunday morning. I was going to set my breakfast plate on a table when I heard, "Miss Kohl! I have a present or you." I turned to see Jarib who went into the kitchen and came out with a round, green fruit lookin' object in a plastic bag. He had brought me a guava. He wasn't able to go on our trip with us this year because of his studies at the university, but I was so touched that he came to bring me a guava in the 10 minutes he had to see us before leaving to church.
And just like that, I accepted the guava and he left without saying goodbye.
We met with our translators, most of whom we know from previous trips and felt like only a day or two had passed since we'd seen them last. They sat with us for breakfast and we asked after their lives, their families, their children. I still didn't have much of a voice, but I let those around me ask the questions and I smiled at the joy of it.
Around 8:30am we were on the bus, headed to our village: Pueblo Nuevo. I sat by one of our team pastors and the drive was very easy. The road was paved the whole way and the landscape was beautiful! We arrived to the village around 11:30am and began unloading the trucks right away. We arrived in two buses and two large trucks, a little smaller than a full semi. We began unloading the trucks of our food, our beds, water, and everything else.
It was about 98F and I was pretty off balance since my ears were still not cleared and my head pressure was intense and I was shivering from all of the bus windows being open. When I went to make my bed and lay down a little, two of my teammates were in our classroom building making their beds. When they saw me walk in they immediately asked if I was 'OK' and when I told them I was slightly woozy and needed to lie down they dropped all they were doing with their own beds and set to work on mine. They wiped down as much of the dirt off of it as possible and added a little plastic cover that they had brought before placing my sheets on for me. That is how my team is. Everyone is forever looking out for everyone else. Everyone cares for everyone else and will drop everything to make sure everyone is ok. I rested briefly before heading to the main tent to put together bags of rice and beans for the families we would see. Around 3pm we did our first service and began seeing our first round of patients.
My friend Jessica and I were assigned to work in the Dental Clinic. I was a little afraid of that at first since neither of us handle blood very well and I knew we would see plenty of that. We had several patients that first day and were at work until 5pm at least. I don't remember it very well as the days began to blend together. But we did have a very young patient, not more than 6 years old probably, who was so afraid at the pain and everything else that she had to be held down by 5 people. The screaming and wailing from the child could be heard from just about anywhere in the compound and it instilled a good amount of fear in our future young patients.
My job mostly consisted of me holding a flashlight while the tooth extraction surgery took place and then washing the tools after the surgery and discarding the used needles. Our training was brief, but it was all we needed. The most difficult part was getting the needles off of the syringe without getting poked by them. We had two dentists, one from Nicaragua and one from the U.S. Between the two of them we performed 122 surgeries in 4 days with over 130 teeth pulled.
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