brie's guest blog!

so...since lynette is a little nuts about having at least one post per month on here, she decided to have me do a little guest blog with pictures from my recent trip there to visit my girls! the only way to describe my time there would be "pure decadence" (you guys will have to ask danielle about that one) :) i had a wonderful time and i already miss them terribly! here are some pictures so you all can get a little peek at what we did. enjoy!

this was from my first day in service. we worked all along the beach and it was gorgeous! danielle started 2 studies that day, one for her and one for isaac. their territory really is amazing and i had an awesome time preaching there. the young sister on the left is vasti-she is super sweet, it was so nice to meet her. and the sister next to me is merilee, she is from canada and is the one that the girls talked about before who has an assignment in business territory in managua. i got in on the last couple days of her stay on the island and we had a blast with her!

of course we HAD to visit the beach :)

this little guy (danielito) went out in service with us a lot. we took turns holding him in his little "kangaroo". he is so well-behaved and would sleep as soon as you started walking. the only thing was it was quite warm so when you took off the carrier you had lovely sweat marks. i know. i'm disgusting.

since there isn't a whole lot to do on the little island, a lot of our evenings were spent watching movies on the tiny little dvd player. we had to watch them with the subtitles cuz you could barely hear anything and it was an adventure trying to fit us all on the beds, but it was fun :)

so danielle and i got up bright and early one morning and she taught me to do laundry! despite the disgusted look on my face it actually was not that bad and we had fun :)

one of my favorite pictures! danielle and i went to do a study of hers that lives right along the beach (really fun study by the way-its a creole couple and the husband is always saying stuff like: "you got da point right der, sis" and "amen!" they are super nice though and seem to really be taking what they're learning to heart!) and this was the view on the way back. the horses just kind of wander around wherever they want on the island

a study of laura's gave her tons of fresh seafood so she wanted to make "rondon", basically a seafood soup made with coconut milk. the tricky part was that the shrimp were still completely whole so danielle and i had the awesomely fun job of taking off their heads, shells, and tails. their whiskers were so long that they got all tangled together. yummy!

just a couple pictures from the many wonderful days in service...danielle and alicia were preaching to this lady who had the most amazing flowers all around her house. unfortunately she caught me taking the picture right after i snapped it...oopsie!

yep...thats the runway! you have to walk across it pretty much every day to get to the other side of the island. they close it when a plane is landing or taking off-which is very inconvenient because then you have to walk all the way to the end of it...i notice that it seems to make people quite cranky...including myself :)

the electricity went out quite a few times when i was there and one day it was out pretty much all day and into the evening so we had the meeting in the dark. one of isaac's studies brought a car battery and they connected two light bulbs to it and strung them in the microphone stands on the stage. it actually helped a ton! it was a really nice, cozy meeting-everyone with their candles :)

one of my last nights there we had a lovely dinner. the couple on the right are from canada, justin and belinda. they were in nicaragua for a wedding and decided to visit corn island for a few days. they are in international construction and their next assignment is in paraguay. they got the call while they were in nicaragua! they went in service with us for a couple days and were great, we had such a good time with them!

last day in service :(

(group from left to right: belinda, justin, laura & danielito, margarita, lynette, alicia, danielle, me, domingo, and arrozman-isaac was taking the picure)

so the night before i left we decided to stay up all night talking and laura had the brilliant idea of going to the beach to see the sunrise. so off we went at 5:30 in the morning! i tried to make lynette give me a piggy-back ride but for some reason that didn't last too long, am i really that heavy??





last meeting. it was so hard to leave!



and finally my last little glimpse of the island. i had an amazing time! it truly was an experience beyond what i could ever imagine. thank you to everyone in the congregation for making me feel at home, and especially to laura and isaac and the girls! hope to see you all soon!

Volcan Masya

This is one of my favorite pics, its the outline of a brother against the sun going down and smoke of the volcano...crazy


So one of the coolest things i have ever done is climb around on this volcano, we went with a really fun group and it was totally worth the sore legs the next few days! Here are some pics from Volcan Masya. We also toured a bat cave....which was cool and scary and really really dark, I took pics but they look boring so i'll spare you.

ready for the bat cave


Our tour guide for the bat caves giving us a pep talk

 

English Assembly

So as promised we have pictures from the English assembly and what we did while we were there. We had an absolute amazing time and had the chance to meet some really great people from all over the world that are serving here in Nicaragua....here are some of the pictures from that trip:

  Inside the assembly hall 

Isaac, Laura,Danielle, Alicia, a missionary couple named Watson's and I stayed at a families house for the assembly - we all had such a great time!

I met the sister in the middle Stacey McClure in Spain 5 years ago....small world 

One night Danielle, Alicia, and I had the chance to have dinner with Ted and Betty Watson who are an amazing missionary couple. They had a really great interview about being the longest serving missionaries here in Nicaragua. To be able to hear thier experiences and ask them anything about Gilead and missionary work was such a treat, I'll always remember it!

We bonded immediately with Pascale and Gulio Lanny from Scotland, they were assigned to serve on the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua a week after we were assigned to Corn Island. Us "islanders" have to stick together. We all really want to visit each others island to see what it is like.

These sisters are from Japan - it was really cool to speak them and having our commen language be spanish. And their accents were really cute.

Bridget and Alethia, whom we met at our spanish convention in Minnesota, it was really nice to see them here too.

This sister Mical is super hardcore! She lives in a little house in the mountains somewhere by herself. And she has 27 bible studies. 

This is Mel, she is actually staying the week with us here on the island and we are having a blast with her. She has a very unique assignment in business terr. in Managua. Super cool girl.

So those are some of the super cool people we met....

Well, thats all for tonight. Thanks for not forgetting us here on Corn Island!

Ok, we are back and in full force. We were having some technical difficulties uploading some new photos on the blog but I think we got the bugs worked out.

So, I would like to introduce our new roomate.....( drum roll please ) Alicia!!! Say hi everyone! We picked her up in Managua the night befor we had our english assembly and special meeting for forigneers here in Nicaragua. And she has been awesome ever since.

Here is an update of the places we have been / people we have seen / things we have done.

This is us in the tract work, Desiree ( the sister that stayed with us for a month ) Laura, Isaac and a sister from the mainland Teresa. We walked about half the island that morning and now we are waiting for the bus - which was CROWDED! But atleast we did'nt have to walk back.


Alot of times we have to have the meeting in the dark because the power will go out and we don't have light. So we will have a meeting by candle light. We have become experts at holding the bible, flipping pages in our book, and balancing a candle, all while not starting a fire.
Danielle reading a scripture by candel light

Even though the construction is over on our new hall we have LOTS of work to do befor we can have a dedication. Just keeping the weeds pulled on our grass-less yard is a chore and a half. On this sunday afternoon we had a good turn out. 11 of us in total! I'll introduce everyone. From left to right.
Carla, Carliani, Claudia, Margarita, Hirenia,Domingo,Danielle,Alica,Me and Laura. We all had dirty hands that showed our hard work

Ok so I think that is all for tonight. I'll try to upload more again soon, like the english convention, climbing a volcano, and preaching on Little Corn Island. Much love to you all, thank you for keeping us in your prayers! - The Girls

Service Stuff

Hey guys,

so we thought we would show you some photos and tell you some stuff from our hours ... many hours in service. The tract work is going really good we have the tracts in spanish english and miskito. We have almost worked the entire perimeter of the island and Danielle and I have memorized a short presentation in miskito. We will need to get it on video in the mean time here it is in written form.

Naksa - Hello

Nahki sma? - How are you?

Yang nini Lynette - My name is Lynette

Naha wauhkataya pain yaba sa - This is a special tract

Naha dukyam sa - This is yours

Baibil kam wal aisi kaiks - You can read it with your bible

tinki pali - Thank you

yu wala - See you another day

Pretty cool right? - ( that's not part of the presentation )

Our biggest service group since we have been here! We all had a great day!


Typical house in service

A little boy talking a bath while Danielle talked to his mom

Some kids reading the mags after we left them with the parents.

Danielle and I taking a rest on a rock. It was hot that day!

Well we wanted to upload more but I think that's all for tonight.... Love you all!

One whole month!

Wow we have been here one whole month now on the Island. Time sure does go by fast, thanks to everyone who has emailed and called, it really means SO much to us! It makes it easier to be here when we know that people are rooting for us back home.

Here is the Pizza we made last Sunday, its beautiful right? We were so excited about it, Danielle Laura and I made the crust at 6:30am so it could rise. We were going to take pics of ourselves eating it and how excited we were but we got so into the eating part that we forgot about the photos. oops.

We have a girl from South Carolina staying with us for a month. Desiree, she has friends that were here on the island. Her friends sent a nice package for the friends here... we are about to eat some candy...that's why we look so excited!

This video just shows how hard it rains here, and how annoying it is if your clothes are hanging outside.