León, Nicaragua - April 20, 2012

What do these two things have in common?










That's right - a stove!  And guess what? You can't have one without the other! So, why am I even mentioning this today? Well, let's go back to last night..... We both went out in service at 5:00 pm and had bible studies last night that wouldn't be over until late so we decided that we would get some spaghetti sauce ready so that all we would have to do is cook up the pasta when our studies were finished. So, about 7:30 pm we put the sauce on the stove to warm up and set the water on to boil.  Everything is going great and next thing we know, it's time to put the pasta in to cook. When we returned to the kitchen we noticed that the flame under the water was out (the sauce had already been turned off).... that happens sometimes if there is a gust of wind - no problem, just start it up again. It turns out that we were out of gas....Hummm, what to do.... the pasta was already in the pot so we decided to let it sit there for about ten minutes and see if it was cooked enough to each - thankfully it was. So dinner turned out ok - but that meant that we wouldn't have any gas to make coffee and as you all know, there aren't any Tim Hortons in the area.... needless to say, it was a slow morning until we could make coffee and get going.

Pat has been put in charge of territories and he has found that quite a lot of the data is out-dated. So, we have been doing a lot of "census" lately. The way they conduct a census here is very thorough and it turns out that we have been using a lot more Spanish in service than we ever thought we would. The way they conduct a census here is by asking at every house in the territory if there are any English speakers in the household. When we find a house where there is an English speaker then we record the information (often taken from a Spanish speaker - hence the need to use Spanish). This has proved to be a very successful method and means that we have updated data for the territories.

Most of you have probably heard us talk about the chicken buses. Well, we finally experienced the real thing! We were coming home from service on Thursday when this lady came on the camionetta with two live chickens. So...how do you carry two live chickens? Well, they seemed to be tied together by their feet and they were hanging up-side-down because the lady was holding them by their feet. They hardly made a sound  and didn't seem to mind the position they were in.  I doubt that they knew they were going to be somebody's dinner. I didn't have my camera, but this picture will give you an idea of how they are carried.

Another interesting thing we saw in the market this week was some iguanas for sale. They weren't for sale to have as pets but rather for dinner. I guess it is quite common to have iguana on the plate....

So, the rainy season seems to have started early here. We've had an opportunity to try out our "window covering". It works fairly well especially since Pat thought to add a few clothes pins to secure the plastic to the window frame. The rain still comes in a little a the top but not as bad as it used to.  My nice little washing machine is going to have a cover made for it. We just bought the material - the same as what we use for BBQ covers - and a sister in our hall is going to make the cover when she has some time.