¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

This year Paul, Becca, Eibhlín, and Orla are celebrating the New Year before any of us, because they are visiting with Paul’s sister and family in NEW ZEALAND!!!  Paul’s sister bought them airline tickets to come visit for six weeks because she knew we could never afford such an expense.

Paul’s family is truly a global family… parents and one brother in Ireland, brother in Germany, sister in Britain, this sister in New Zealand, and Paul in Nicaragua.  They manage to get together at least every other year.  It is extraordinary.

When Sarah’s parents went to Taiwan as Presbyterian missionaries, they said goodbye to their families for five years.  She and her family returned to the States on freighter ships only every five years.

Times have changed for most of us.  Except for Paul, we all try to see our families at least once a year.  Our children and their families come here, to Nicaragua, once a year and we try to get to them another time.  We have email, video chats, what’s app, and we feel in-touch.  I don’t know if I could do this work without all the wonders of today’s technology available.

Our Nicaraguan staff have smart phones, video and what’s app messaging, and calls with their loved ones abroad, while perched beside the park to use its free wifi, but they rarely see their distant family.  Even some staff members, whose family live in-country but hours away, only see their family over Christmas when the CDCA shuts down and they take a bus to go visit.  Their families cannot afford the bus fare to come see them.

This is one aspect of poverty… the loss of family connections… and connections with friends when they’ve moved away.  This loss is something we learned about while running shelters in the U.S., and we see here…  it is an aspect that most of us who are wealthier don’t ever think of.

So, as you gather with friends and family to welcome in the New Year, remember those who are separated, especially because of poverty.  And may we all have a…

Happy New Year!

-Kathleen

Note:  Our December newsletter is out… in your mailbox and email, so please share it and our blogs!  You can also access it here:  

https://jhc-cdca.org/keep-in-touch/newsletter-archives/

Future Fridays: the Meaning of Love

This final week of Advent, here in Nicaragua, we hung our 35-year-old banner of love.  It is a Haitian mother holding her baby.

For God so loved the world…the WORLD…that He gave His Begotten Son. -  John 3:16A

Jesus taught us how to love.  He taught us how to be servants to one another…

• To care for the poor
• To heal the sick
• To free the oppressed
• To touch the untouchables
• To turn the other cheek
• To love our neighbor as ourselves…

And to do all of that we have to love this world and care for it, because…

• The poor suffer most in droughts, floods, hurricanes, and all the natural disasters that are growing
• The sick population is getting sicker with mosquitos multiplying, with unnatural heat ways, and pollution in the air affecting breathing, pollution in the food, soil, and water making people sick
• The peoples who are losing their homes, and are oppressed by rising seawaters, need freedom to make new homes or not lose their homes at all
• Many immigrants are considered unwanted and as climate change progresses, we have to touch them and welcome them
• Turning the other cheek re climate change means doing what is right whether other nations are doing it or not
• And loving our neighbor as our ourselves… well, look at the above and do WE want to be in those shoes… No.

Love means doing what is right by those who suffer.

-Kathleen

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Donate here to the ongoing work of the CDCA in Nicaragua:

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/jhc-cdca

¡Feliz Navidad! Good Tidings of Great Joy!

¡Feliz Navidad!

In many Latin cultures, Christmas Eve is the big celebration as opposed to Christmas Day.  Here in Nicaragua that is also true.

There is a midnight mass.  The family gathers for a big meal, probably including stuffed chicken, rice, vegetables, and a dessert, Maria en Su Gloria (ripe plantains baked with orange juice, cinnamon sticks, sugar and rum).  They open presents.  Fireworks color the midnight sky.  And mortars sound out at the stroke of midnight.  It is a festive evening time.

The following day, Christmas, is a day mostly to recover from the festivities of the night before.

This suits us fine, because our son, with his Nicaraguan wife and daughter, go and celebrate with her family on Christmas Eve and then come to us for Christmas Day.  They don’t have to choose between families.  Almost every year we have lived in Nicaragua (for 25 years now), we have been fortunate to celebrate with all our children, their partners, and our grandchildren.  We have a plastic tree… we are in the tropics… and stockings for the multitude.  Christmas is my favorite time of the year, because of our family.

When we ran shelters in the U.S., each Christmas we hosted a dinner for our shelter guests and anyone who was alone.  The last dinner we hosted, we had over 300 guests. 

We know from experience, and are keenly aware, that Christmas can be a lonely day, a grief-stricken day, a hopeless day…

For those of you who are alone today and tomorrow, we send you our love.

For those of you who are saddened because someone you love has died and the day feels empty, we send you our sympathy.

For those of you who are hopeless, we pray that your days will lighten and you will feel the love of the Divine.

And to all, we wish for you a blessed Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of the One who taught us how to love, how to give, how to be a good person.

-Kathleen

NOTE: If you are reading this blog using the mobile version, click on "web version" to see the full blog with all the features including "subscribe to blog by email".  Please join us and also share on your social media.

Donate here to the ongoing work of the CDCA in Nicaragua: 

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/jhc-cdca

Future Fridays: Entrusted with the Sounds of Joy

This week of Advent we hung our banner of joy.  It is a Chinese dragon with the character for joy (Sarah grew up in Taiwan).  It is stained and used to have six bells sewn on the bottom… the banner is over 35 years old now.

Joy… sometimes an elusive feeling for poor people, depressed people, and as our daughter Jessica recently wrote, a elusive feeling for people younger than me because of climate change… the feeling that the future is bleak.

I have felt intense joy holding my sons after they were born… joy and an intense feeling of responsibility.

We were entrusted with this earth.  If we do not start changing our habits, we will kill ourselves off.  And long after we are gone the planet will heal and some kind of life will emerge again, but the joy of children’s squeals of laughter will be silenced, the roars of tigers will be quieted, no more majestic trumpets from elephants, no more whale songs…the silence will be deafening.

Whether you “believe” in climate change or not… whether you think climate change is “man-made” or not… we don’t want to risk the silence.  We want to do our part, if for no other reason then for our children and grandchildren to feel joy again.

-Kathleen

NOTE: If you are reading this blog using the mobile version, click on "web version" to see the full blog with all the features including "subscribe to blog by email".  Please join us and also share on your social media.

Donate here to the ongoing work of the CDCA in Nicaragua: 

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/jhc-cdca

Pat Floerke, ¡Presente!

Today is the one-year anniversary of Pat’s death.

Pat was a Jubilee House Community member, since 1987 with her surviving sister, Kathy.  She was the counselor in our Nueva Vida Clinic.  She was the clerk of the Managua Friends Meeting.  She was Kathy’s sister, and together they were partners/friends/family for their lives.

Pat was gifted in crafts of all kinds.  And in small ways and big ways, Pat served as our:

• Ear for when we needed to talk
• Caregiver of the Community children
• Teacher of the Community children
• Coffee maker
• Pet caregiver
• Gluer/mender
• Welcoming person for volunteers
• Driver of the Community children to school
• Craft teacher
• Vision checker and eye glasses finder and maker
• Inspiration for many
• And a compassionate counselor for so many hurting and in need
• Plus, so much more

So now we make our own coffee.  We try our hand at gluing and mending.  We make sure the volunteers are properly welcomed and we try to listen better to each other.  But filling that need at the clinic is outside our scope of expertise.  Dr. Dominga Soto has volunteered for the past year serving this need.

We are setting up a Pat Floerke Memorial Fund to hire Dr. Soto to come five mornings a week.  The need is great and growing.  We are going to mark the therapy room in memory of Pat.  Please help by committing to a recurring monthly gift or contributing a one-time gift.  I think Pat would be pleased that we are keeping her vital work going.

-Kathleen

NOTE: If you are reading this blog using the mobile version, click on "web version" to see the full blog with all the features including "subscribe to blog by email".  Please join us and also share on your social media.

Donate here to the ongoing work of the CDCA in Nicaragua, and/or dedicate it to Pat's memory: 

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/jhc-cdca