30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 11--Guards!

We feel very safe in our community, which always has one guard stationed by the front gate. Our neighborhood has never had a robbery,  which is very unusual here, and something we are so thankful for. Many missionaries and Nicaraguans that we've met have had multiple incidents of petty theft or robbery while living in Managua, and because of this almost all larger homes and communities employ a guard. Pictured here is the wonderful Manuel Antonio Herrera, with Charlotte "Spidergirl" Ippel and Quentin "Superman" Norman. Our two guards rotate 24-hour shifts; not a very fun job, and I'm sure the pay isn't much. We're EXTREMELY thankful to have friendly men to welcome us home each time we drive up to the "La Veranera" community! Charlotte loves saying "hola" to the guards multiple times each day:)!

30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 10--Ultimate Frisbee

On Sunday afternoons at 3:00 sharp. . .oh, I mean 3:45ish. . .or whenever people show up . . .between 20-40 men, women, boys, and girls appear on the NCA soccer field for a game of Ultimate Frisbee! I'm not sure how long the tradition has gone on, but Ruth and I enjoy the fellowship and mostly friendly competition with a variety of expats, missionaries, and Nicaraguans. We are sweating before the game starts due to the heat and humidity, so you can only imagine how nasty we are after the second game (if we can muster through both!). The younger kids (including all of ours) run around together on the NCA playground, though we've recently hired a neighbor girl to keep her eyes on Charlotte during the games. Ruth had a nasty ankle sprain after stepping in a hole on the field (some of you may remember the Rehoboth prairie dog holes back in the day?) a while ago that kept her off the field for a month, but last week she made her strong comeback and has mostly recovered.

30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 9--Our Neighborhood

We love our neighborhood.  We live in a “compound” with 4 other missionary families, and they have become a family to us.  Their support and encouragement has been such a blessing to us from the very beginning. We arrived to our new home in Managua for the first time at 10:00 at night, and by 7:00 the next morning, our kids already had friends!  There are 15 kids in our neighborhood between the ages of 2-12, and they play together every day, running around outside and from house to house.  We have really enjoyed the adult friendships too—I (Ruth), being the crazy extrovert I am, have so appreciated having friends around to talk to all the time.  Andrew and I have a perpetual longing for a deep community, and have found it here.  We exchange children, borrow ingredients and cars, play games after bedtime (we are so glad we brought our baby monitor!), ride to places together, share meals, exercise together, share struggles, Facebook chat each other at night even though if we talked loudly enough we could hear from one house to the other, help each others kids with homework, and the list goes on… We are so thankful to God for providing us with this safe and loving place that has become a home away from home for us. 

30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 8--Crazy Cellphone Deals

Beginning at 6:30 AM, our cell phones begin to receive text messages from our cellphone company, Movistar. (You have two cell phone provider choices here. . .Claro is the other company, and they provide our internet). The texts continue periodically throughout the day, touting amazing "deals" for recharging our "saldo," or minutes. We're not on any type of contract here; we just recharge our phones with "minutes" whenever we are running low at any corner store, and it's great to do it when there are deals. Granted, we don't always understand what the deals are, but they seem SO good all the time:)We've also heard there are tons of restrictions on these deals, but we also don't understand those restrictions, so ignorance continues to be bliss! We use our cell phones MUCH less here than in the States, but we are also paying MUCH less than the monthly $100 Verizon bill we were accustomed to, and we are thankful to both have cell phones here in Nicaragua.

30 Days of Thankgiving: November 7--Mrs. Sandra

A smooth day in the PreK2 classroom at NCA wouldn't be possible without Mrs. Sandra Telleria, my (Andrew's) trusty sidekick and classroom aide. She's been working in the PreK2 room for 5 years, which gives her quite an edge when it comes to experience in early childhood education! Sandra is up for anything, and always looks for ways to make my day a bit easier and less chaotic. She VERY RARELY shakes her head and says, "Mr. Ippel!" in a certain tone after I plan a very messy, crazy lesson for the students that leaves our room and our children a disaster:) I am so thankful for her ability to communicate in English and Spanish--she helps speak with parents, translate documents and newsletters, and is my private Spanish tutor after my students leave for the day. We have a rule that I can only speak Spanish with her after 12:30; unfortunately I'm a bit inconsistent with following that rule! I appreciate the way Sandra communicates her faith and her strong relationship with God-her faith shines through in our conversations throughout the day. Sandra has two children attending college in California and is looking forward to a trip there over Christmas to spend time together as a family.

30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 6-Carpool!

There are a minimum of 19 trips made from our neighborhood to the school (about a 10 minute drive) each week, and I (Ruth) only have to do 4 or so, and none in the morning!  It is such a blessing to have neighbors to carpool with, although it often means piling 10 people into our 7-passenger Odyssey—the trunk is actually the most coveted seat!

 

Don't worry--this picture isn't actually part of the carpool:) Quentin and Charlotte are just carpool wannabees!

30 Days of Thanksgiving: November 5--Our Van

Ruth always said that our Honda Odyssey in the States was her favorite earthly possession, and the first tears she shed as we said our many goodbyes were as our van pulled out of our driveway at 707 Union for the last time.  Imagine our surprise when we pull into a used car lot in Managua after hours of car shopping and see a 2003 Honda Odyssey that was in our price range.  We are so thankful to have a car that we know and love—the roads are crazy here, so it’s nice to have something familiar while driving.  We never knew that the Odyssey was capable of off-roading, but it’s proven to be very versatile many times! We are also thankful for our favorite car wash here that will thoroughly wash our van inside and out for just $4!