Last Week - surprises!

With half of the Manna House participating in community home-stays last week, I am just now posting the Chureca update. Last week was a week of surprises! For one, on Tuesday, we were surprised to arrive at the clinic and find all of our mothers there to receive a gift of food from a visiting organization. With the benefit of this centrality, we were able to stay near the clinic and use the morning as a chance to play with the children and get to know the families in a more casual setting than our weekly "official" house visits. The new phrase I learned in the week previous provided very useful: "Llevame en tuto" or "Carry me on your shoulders" was requested repeatedly. On Wednesday, our visiting doctors lead a charla on sexual health which all of the children's mothers participated in actively. The very professional and fluent doctors were able to engage the mother's interest while providing enlightening information. The final surprise occurred on Thursday morning. I was in my home-stay when I received a call from the Manna House telling me we'd have to cancel the home visits due to the impending hurricane about to hit Nicaragua. Although the brunt of the hurricane was to fall on the opposite side (East Coast) of Nicaragua, there was a severe storm warning for Managua. The roads in and around Chureca can become impassible during torrents of rain, and this unfortunately this lead us to abandon our usual visit. However, it is fortunate that everyone stayed safe, and Managua remained unharmed by the storms other than some rain. Now everyone is geared up to get back to work this week! Stay tuned for more updates.