Missionary to Mercenary, Idealist to Realist, Loving to Loving Better

Recently, our good friends Nick and Kim Espinosa came down to visit us. It was truly enjoyable. The stay was abbreviated, but we filled it to the max. See map for details, if you can follow.
We traveled all around and saw beautiful things, but the most enjoyable parts were the conversations and questions.

Being in Nicaragua (or anywhere) for a while, it is easy for everything you see to become commonplace and even completely uninteresting. What we used to think was charming now can be a real nuisance when we're not in the right mindset. When stuck on the highway behind a herd of 50 cattle and 3 oxcarts, an American should be laughing and shaking his head, not pretending they're in America and that the cows are cars and trying to pass on the right shoulder. Why did we come to Nicaragua? Why did we decide to stay? Because of cows in the road, that's why.

As we drove, Nick and Kim were not afraid to ask tough questions. "How do you reconcile this poverty with your lifestyle? How can you drive by this poverty everyday on the way to your nice house and not feel terrible about yourself?" Thanks, Nick. The answer is... there is no answer. Where, in the midst of dirt floors and hurting people, are we called? That, I think, is the more relevant question. America hides poverty a lot better, like across town, so it's much easier to ignore. Life here is raw, and it is what it is.

One of my parents' dear (ex) friends made the comment when Julie and I began working with La Vida Nica that Dane had gone from "missionary to mercenary", once helping the Nicaraguan people, and now taking advantage of them for profit. This comment really hurt, but I realize that it was simply as a result of a lack of knowledge of my character and my intention (not to mention, I'll be happy to show you any bank statements if you think we're making profit...). The truth is, though, people feel this way. I will attempt not to dwell on the fact that this comment was made from a roughly 4,000 square foot house in Commonwealth, having no knowledge of or interest in poverty. I'm not upset. I'm not upset...

Julie and I learned through our time with Manna Project much about poverty. We learned that it is so much more complex than the lack of things. Poverty will never be fixed by giving more things to poor people. Yes, things would be so so so much easier if it could be. True poverty is a state of mind, usually drilled into a people over generations and generations.

We also learned about Nicaraguan-specific poverty. We learned that pity gets people just about nowhere. In Nicaragua, there is a public school system that is available to anyone for free. It may be more difficult to get there, but you can go. Then you can even go to college for free. If you make good grades while in college, the government will actually pay you. There are educational opportunities in Nicaragua, even though they are very different than those in the States. What has been more depressing to me than any scene of a self-pitying beggar in a trash dump is someone who has worked their ass off to make it through school against the odds, they paid their own way in an apartment in Managua to go to college, they made the grades at the top of their class, graduated with a law degree, looked for a job for 6 months, and then returned home to cut lawns with a machete because there is no work. As much as I am afraid that I just sounded like an American Republican, the idea that America was founded on, the idea that if you work hard enough at something you will succeed, simply doesn't apply here.

From there, La Vida Nica was born. This country has been ravaged by its own government and by natural disasters for so long that there is little hope left for the very poor. They can work and work and work and they end up just where they started. The future of this country, as anyone will tell you, is tourism, just like it has been for its neighbors Costa Rica, Belize, etc. Idealists complain that tourism has robbed Costa Rica of its culture, but I say it has robbed Costa Rica of its poverty and it has raised the standard of living of the common Tico to levels that no Latin American country ever anticipated.

The vision of La Vida Nica is the training and development of Nicaraguans in the hospitality and restaurant industry with the goal of promotion to management positions and later being sent to other new developments accross the country to continue the training and development of other locals. Are we going to change the entire country? Maybe. All we know is that we have already hired and trained two maintenance workers, two maids, and a receptionist. We've made a difference in these people's lives, a difference for the better.

Do I cancel my surfing every morning to hand out quarters to poor people who live on the dirt road? No. Should I? No. We're all looking for who we are and how we fit into God's plan here. Mine looks very different than yours. Julie's looks very different than mine.

Thanks Nick and Kim for helping us see Nicaragua all over again through new eyes. It's a beautiful place and we're here for a reason. A damn good one, if you ask me.

Come stay with us everyone. This is a photo of our office.

An interesting year

If you are now reading this post, then you are a true friend. After a full 14 months without a single post, I would have given up on me. Thanks.

So what has happened since last I blogged? Hmmm, not too much, but with photos:

- Decided against leaving Nicaragua
- Found a job starting a new company here
- Got married on November 22
- Moved into an apartment in Managua
- Learned to surf better
- Moved into a beach house at Gran Pacifica

So there you have it. If you've got any questions, I'd be happy to elaborate.

Our company is called La Vida Nica, and it is a concierge service and rental management company. What, might you ask, experience did I have in this area? None. But now I do. Julie and I both work for this fledgling company, and it's doing well. With the support of some investors here in Nicaragua, we plan to stick with this company as long as it keeps panning out.

We are currently living and working at Gran Pacifica Resort (www.granpacifica.com), just one hour due west of Managua. We rent a nice little house and we love to have visitors. In fact, just this week Nick and Kim Espinosa came down here from Houston to stay for a few days. We had a fantastic time.

We're currently building a website for our company, which you can find at www.lavidanica.com. I know it's just a placeholder now, but it will be very impressive in about a month.

Thanks again for checking in. I hope to be better and more interesting with this blog now that I actually have a life where I spend a little while at a desk every once in a while.

Saludos,
Dane

Quit Complaining

Julie gets back today, so there will be more blog photos very soon. Relax.

Ever-Changing Gringolandia

I just got back from church, and it was nice. I go to a church called International Christian Fellowship, and that's really what it is. It's an English-speaking church, which is a welcome break once a week. Today, in an event which is not totally uncommon, there were more visitors at ICF than members.

When you live in a place like Nicaragua, there are constantly short-term mission groups coming in for one week, two week stays. The community is so fluid. I have heard that from many people who have been here for a number of years. Even my stay, which I consider long-term, is only 13 months. After that I will leave and perhaps never live in this community again. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that a Sunday congregation at ICF has never and will never be the same on any other Sunday.

Today there was a choir from Indiana who led worship (a nice break for me), a group of 11 from Ontario, a small group from South Dakota, a set of parents from Iowa, one from Puerto Rico, one from Nigeria, and 4 from North Carolina. I know I forgot some, but you get the idea. Pretty diverse.

Our ultimate frisbee group which plays every Sunday at 2 o'clock is a representation of the fluidity as well. Just since I've been here, we've lost 4 players who used to be with Manna Project, a couple who went to work in D.C. with International Justice Mission, and another family who is moving back to the States as well. Those players have been replaced by study abroad students from Emory, a couple folks from Maryland, a business student from Dort College, and more who I'm forgetting.

How does this affect my friendships here? Unless you want to ride an emotional rollercoaster the whole time you're here, you kind of have to hold on loosely to the relationships that you build. Don't get me wrong, there are going to be many tears when I leave this place, because I have built friendships that I will dearly miss, but if I thought I would be lifelong friends with every Spring Break group we host, I would probably be hurt more than is necessary.

For those of you who know me well, you know that this is environment in which I thrive. I enjoy meeting new people, sweeping them off of their feet, making an impression, and then fading from view. I used to dislike this about myself, and tried to change, but then I pretty much realized that this is how I was made and it can be a beautiful way that I can serve people. I have a handful of very close friendships which I hold very dearly to my heart, but for the most part this is the role that I play in people's lives. That makes this environment perfect. People go home remembering a tall, exuberant, friendly guy who was full of life and who showed them that service can be fun, worthwhile, and not just for girls (usually our girl:guy ratio on trips is about 3:1). Then they begin to live their lives at home again, maybe a spec differently than before, and they never email me or expect me to email them. Perfect!

Of course there are those who come to visit here and are looking for a very meaningful conversation and a life epiphany and a beautiful friendship built in a week. This is Julie's department. I don't think that anyone has ever left a conversation with Julie and not felt a little better about her or himself. When she speaks to people, she makes them feel like they're the only person in the world, and that she isn't just penciling them in between a hundred other things she has to do. The thing is, she does have a hundred other things to do, which is the amazing thing. And one of them is sending you a card after you get home.

From this I conclude two things:
1. I'm the luckiest guy in the world
2. We make a killer team

This post has been more of a rambling journal entry, but I thought some people may enjoy a glimpse into my mind for a moment. Perhaps I was incorrect. But you've already read it all, so too bad. I love you guys. Have a wonderful day.

Here we go again

Before I begin, I will say that if you were totally grossed out by my previous entry about my proposal to Julie, you can find the completely abridged, completely unromantic, bordering on embarrassed version of the events on Julie's blog, in her usual style, which is linked in the top right corner of this page. Opposites attract, I suppose...

It is now the second week of February, and we have finally begun our new cycle of programs for the year. This is good news for all of you who enjoy reading this blog, because I will actually now have something to write about! Yesterday was our first day, and it was a good one. After some shifting and sorting, here's what my week will now look like (subject to further change, of course):

Teaching Spanish literacy to 2nd and 3rd graders
Teaching English to (playing games with) little kids from ages 6-10
Assisting with a feeding program
Helping 6-14-year-olds appreciate music
Orchestrating micro-finance loans and helping to teach a weekly business class
Playing sports with my Nicaraguan friends
Coaching/Managing the best stinking baseball team in the greater Managua area
Surfing like a madman

Not too shabby, huh? I know it sounds like a lot, but let me assure you... it IS. Please be praying for me and my sanity, and for the stress level around the house and the community to remain low. And if you want to give some more donations, I'm still about a full G-note short of my pledged commitment, so that would be nice too. Email me.

More good news is that Julie got her camera back from the shop, so the pictures should start rolling in again. She recently had a visit from one of her best friends in the States, and so she's posted those pictures on her site, which is also linked on this page. More good things to come.

So yesterday was Literacy and English, today will be feeding program, music, and micro-finance. Big day. I just wanted to give a quick update on what's going on here. Thanks for tuning in.

Until cheese rolls down like waters...

And mush-ness like a mighty stream.

Julia Marie Mills and I are engaged to be wed. This is an incredible blessing to me. The big event occurred on Christmas Eve, 2007.

Disclaimer: I am about to relay the story of the proposal, so if you would like to wait until you come to Nicaragua to take me to dinner before you hear the story, please cease reading immediately.

To the right, you will see the scene of the crime. As I already mentioned, it was Christmas Eve. The Thorwaldson family had the pleasure of hosting the Mills family for Christmas Eve dinner, and everything went beautifully. Toward the end of the evening, I needed a diversion to get Julie out of the house. I told her that I probably wouldn't make it to the Christmas Eve church service if I didn't get some Starbucks first. It was perfect. While we were at Starbucks, my family was making the necessary preparations for the big event.

It just so happened that in between this certain Starbucks and my church lies Austin Parkway Elementary School, where Julie and I met in 1994. When I pulled into the parking lot of this school, Julie seemed a little surprised, but not certainly not suspicious of what was to come. I have a feeling that she actually expected something completely un-romantic like making out on the swings or something. I was still somehow able to coax her out of the car, and we began to walk.

We were just chatting about how little everything seems now that seemed so big in elementary school, and walking along the wall when it happened. My entire family had been hiding in the back yard of a close-by neighbor, and when Julie and I reached the pre-determined spot, my little brother Dylan plugged in an extension cord that illuminated what you see here. She stopped walking and made some kind of surprised noise. At first she thought we were interrupting someone else, and then she began to ask, "Did you do this?! How did you do that?!" I held her close and walked with her into the gazebo. It was beautiful. In the center of the gazebo was a bottle of champagne, flowers, and a number of candles. When we were in the middle of gazebo, I took my arm from around her shoulders and she began to look around more closely. When she turned around, she saw what she hadn't seen before. Written on the wall behind us, in Christmas lights, about 15 feet tall, was "Marry me Julie." See below.

She saw it, gasped, covered her mouth, and turned back around toward me. When she did, she saw that I was on my knee with a ring in my hand, and I asked her again. She said yes! As soon as she did, we lit all of the candles in the gazebo, and we prayed together. It was the best experience of my life. Then we drank a bunch of the champagne and took a bunch of pictures.

It was such an amazing experience to be surrounded by such supportive family during a time like that. It was also pretty incredible to look back on what a wild history Julie and I have together. I left for Nicaragua only two days after the proposal, where I found that we had no internet nor working phones. For all of those reading this who did not receive a personal phone call about the news, please accept my pathetic, third-world apology.

Now it's back to normal life. Or, I suppose I should say, life as normal as Julie's and mine ever is. After about two and a half weeks of wedding planning in the States, she came back to Nica. It's tough spending that much time away from someone to whom you just proposed a day earlier, you should try it.

So we're back in the land of rice, beans, power outages, surf, and sun. It's such a contrast to spend an extended amount of time in the United States and then to return. I must admit, however, that this time I was somewhat ready. I had forgotten a few things for my return the night before I was due to leave (surprise surprise) and the only place still open to shop was, you guessing it, Walmart. As I wandered through the aisles and aisles of price slashing and cart-bumping and 200-foot ceilings, I must admit that my eyes were big and my head was wobbly and through my wide open mouth I muttered to myself, "I miss Nicaragua."

So that's all for now I suppose. Our programs start up again in the second week of February, so I'm hoping that I can sneak off to Costa Rica and see some cousins during the first week. My next entry will probably be describing the wonderful trip I had while my dad and brother joined me in Nica for New Years, so stay tuned.

Buenash Díash!

I recently spent a week living in the home of one of the families in our community here. Marlon, an incredible guy, does the gardening and maintenance at the Manna house a few times a week. Spending a week in his house was an honor and a beautiful experience in learning to love better. His wife Arlen (that's right, Marlon and Arlen) and their 2-month-old baby girl Marlín (that's right) spend most of their time at the house, taking care of business. They also have a gorgeous 4-year-old daughter named Ashley who could seriously make a killing in catalog advertisement modeling in the States, along with an 8-year-old deaf son named Jefferson who is no longer allowed to watch Spiderman because he always jumps off the roof afterward. This family's love for each other and for me was amazingly evident throughout the short week I spent with them.

From the time that I arrived to see the entire family of five moved into one bedroom so that I could have the other to myself, I felt their generosity. Luckily I wasn't completely isolated from the family in the house though, because none of the walls quite reach from floor to ceiling, and the curtains for doors weren't exactly soundproof. Nicaraguans sleep HARD. My puny foam ear plugs were no match for the barks from the dogs, the crows from the roosters, the bad dreams of Jefferson, the asthmatic coughs of Ashley, and the usual banter of a two-month old baby. Long nights, but what little sleep I got was multiplied ten times the minute little Ashley would stick her little face in the curtain of my room, start walking toward my bed on her little legs, and then get grabbed from behind by a faceless parental arm and reprimanded (by much more noise than she was making) for almost waking the gringo. Every once in a while she would make it all the way to my bed and the first thing I experience in the morning is a beautiful little girl poking me in the nose and saying, "Buenash díash, Den!!!" The chasing and wrestling match that ensues is an amazing way to start the day, even if it is before 6.

I really wish I could use words better to share the amazing experience of learning about this one Nicaraguan family. A 1980s television showing a dubbed Jean Claude Van Damme movie is not necessarily something that I would have enjoyed before that week, but when the whole family is gathered around eating together and taking turns on my lap (except Marlon and Arlen), it became one of my favorite things in the world. I wish you could hear Jefferson's shrill screams of absolute joy when throwing and catching a frisbee, or that you could read a book next to Marlín, knowing it's time to swing the hammock for her again by when she starts fussing, or that you could taste the incredible chicken that Arlen makes with only a Coleman double burner camping stove, or that you could see Marlon's face as he describes how he overcame a past I could never imagine and gives constant thanks to God for a present that I would never want. In that house, life is hard but life is real, and the love they share is real-er. The most important thing in that house is not Bon Jovi blaring at 6:30am (which is pretty important), but the way that they love each other, and the sacrifices they make for one another. And for me! For me, a complete outsider who, no matter how hard I try, can never really know. But they let me in anyway, and crammed themselves in a room smaller than any dorm room I've ever had to myself in order to do it. After spending that time with them, I see that my heart and my love can be real-er, and I feel blessed that I am in such an environment to practice that.

A lot of real-er love,
Dane