Trip Summary - from our Pastor, Reverend Dr. Ed Deyton:

Your delegation (Allison and Julie McLeod, Emily and Wendy deLemos and I) are back from Nicaragua. We are travel weary and a little disoriented with re-entry. But we can report that we have walked with saints and sat down to fellowship in the Kingdom of God.

The poverty is massive and in many parts of the country the danger is real. Particularly disheartening is the Managua city dump, where thousands come to pick and often eat. Seven hundred souls actually live in the dump, in little shacks thrown together from the refuse of demolished buildings. Yet even there a school thrives with children in their clean white shirts, and dark blue skirts and trousers.

We traveled so far back in the mountains that there were more ruts than roadway. And when we arrived we found a man representing our Nicaragua covenant organizing patients to see a doctor or nurse. Haverhill now has a full uniformed soccer team there (check the tee shirts!) and kids have beads and crayons. We delivered the medications to a nurse who was grateful to have just a few pills on her shelves for the hundreds of people she sees each month.

We brought piñatas along with us to two schools with dirt floors, and watched kids whack it and scramble after the candy. It struck us as a little ironic that we were delivering toothbrushes.

Along the way we also did a few tourista things like a ride on the wire across a lake (I sacrificed the experience to be the photographer) and a look down the mouth of a smoking volcano.

Our teenagers charmed the children wherever they went with their warmth and poise. And when we had a chance to sing for congregations, Deyton and the Delegation rocked them.

The experience that we bring back, even more than the poverty, is that of heroic saints, mostly living in houses with dirt floors and being paid $20 a month, ministering to the poorest of the poor and lifting up the next generation. We covet the blessing of supporting their work in the present and continuing in the future. We are one in the spirit.

Trip Summary - from delegation member, Julie McLeod:

In February 2008, Ballard Vale United Church sent a group of missionaries to Nicaragua. Rev. Ed Deyton, Wendy deLemos and Julie McLeod were the adults in the group. We also brought two youth group members; Allison McLeod and Emily deLemos.

The New England United Methodist Church has been working in covenant with the Iglesia de Christo Nicaragua for twenty five years. They have recently expanded that mission to include the very rural areas outside of the major city of Managua.

Our group brought medical supplies, clothing and medical personnel to people living in the rainforests and mountains of San Juan de Rio Coco. They also served food to children participating in a feeding program in Masaya. They delivered 5 sewing machines to a school that teaches single moms to sew.

Another trip is planned for February of 2010.