And so it begins...

Last Sunday, I visited the Creole Moravian church in town. They spoke in English and sang hymns I knew, from authentic Moravian hymnals. They had announcements about raising funds and church meetings, and the organist dragged behind and the choir dragged behind worse. It was just like home.

The pastor is a woman from the United Church of Canada named Deborah. She just moved here a few weeks ago with her husband, Don, who is going to work with the prison system. They invited us over for dinner on Sunday. As we stood outside their locked gate (which, like most gates, was about eight feet high), a good distance from their house, wondering how to let them know we were there, a man stopped by and said, "Oh, I'll let them know for you." He then proceeded to climb over the gate and approach the house. We thought, "We could've done that, we just didn't think we should." As we waited, the power on the street suddenly went out, plunging us into darkness outside the locked gate in a neighborhood we didn't know very well. As no one was coming, I expedited matters by scaling the fence myself and going to find Deborah. When I got to her door, the man who had gone to let her know we were there was busy asking her for money. I guess it makes sense to kill two birds with one stone, while he was in the neighborhood.

We got the situation straightened out and the gate opened, and proceeded to have a lovely conversation about life in Puerto Cabezas. Deborah and Don are really neat people, as one has to be to up and move to Nicaragua for four years at 60 years of age. She talked about getting tear gassed in riots in Kenya, and he talked about the appalling state of Puerto Cabezas' prisons, which are severely overcrowded and lacking in food and other resources.

We have also started working this week, but as I must now cook dinner that story will wait for another day.