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Day 5 in Nicaragua

Note: This post was originally done on Facebook on August 2.

Although this is day 5 this will be my first post on our mission trip. It's been an interesting couple of days. We arrived last Tuesday after a day of travelling and have been spending time in Managua. Every year a group of us come down early to purchase pots and other crafts from the locals. We then send it back to Norfolk, sell it during coffee hour, and use the proceeds to fund the next trip.This is my first time to a 3rd world country so I've seen quite a bit that I'm not accostomed to. For example, you're just as likely to see automobiles in the roads as you are horse-drawn, ox-drawn, or bull-drawn carts. A good deal of Managua is built up and modern, while many of the villages have small cinder-block homes that many people live in. The other day we stopped on a highway to purchase some pewter from a local artisan. This person's store was in the front of the building. In the back was both the workshop and living area for the family. Several men and one boy were smelting the pewter and pouring it into molds, while a woman was handwashing their clothes in a tub full of water.I'm trying to resist the urge to judge these people by our standards in the U.S. It is so easy to say, "Oh these poor people, they have nothing." But such a statement puts us in a superior position, at least in our minds. I'm not convinced that I have an intrinsically better life because I live in a house with two cars, central air conditioning, and a washer and dryer.The poorer villages that I've seen here seem to have something that we lack in the U.S. They have a genuine sense of community. They all live together, run accross the street to visit their neighbors, and help each other out when someone needs something. I'll have to admit that from my U.S., pioneer, self-made-man sensibilities, all this helping is quite foreign to me. Sometimes I get quite uncomfortable and want to be left alone - but that's just me.I've seen boys working side-by-side with their fathers and learning what it's like to be a man in this culture. I've seen girls likewise doing the same with their mothers. It strikes me at how different our own culture is where we ship our children off to school to be educated en mass by single authority figures. That's not to say that one is better than the other, just different.Tomorrow I'll be heading down to Chaguatillo to join the rest of my group. I'm hoping to develop more thoughts on mission work throughout these days. Thanks for reading and God Bless.Conor+

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