Tropical “Autumn”

Seasons in Central America aren’t defined so much by the designations familiar to North Americans of “spring”, “summer”, “autumn”, and “winter” as much as they are by the descriptions “rainy” or “dry”. Likewise, there aren’t arbitrary dates to change the seasons. For example, the rainy season doesn’t begin on March 21st (the first day of spring)—it begins when it suddenly starts to rain 5-7 days a week, which is usually towards the end of April. This is hard for me to wrap my gringo brain around, as I desperately want to call late September through early December “Fall”. My favorite month in the States has always been October, and it made me a little sad to miss it for the first time.

Ah, October: when (at least in Texas and Oklahoma) you can leave the windows open all day and the A/C or heater off. The whole month feels like a vacation. Julie usually goes crazy making pumpkin-flavored treats, and you can use the slight crispness in the evening air as an excuse to build a fire or at least make some hot chocolate. Sometimes the leaves even change color before they die.

Here, you leave the windows open all day all year round, would never build a fire even if you had a fireplace, and if your trees are changing colors, they’ve got problems.

We are now coming to the end of the rainy season. October, which historically is the rainiest month of the year, actually saw less rain this year than the months before it, and now that we’re in November, we don’t see rain more than once a week (if that).

I couldn’t tell you the meteorological reasons for it, but we’re also enjoying some cooler weather. The humidity is down, and the temperature hasn’t been getting above 90—at night it may even get below 70. For locals who are used to it here, anything below 75 is cold! And we only have more to look forward to as December is usually cooler than November.

Pumpkin Sunday

At some point in the somewhat recent past, I developed a love for all things pumpkin. I think it started with something delicious that Whitney made years ago, but I can’t be sure. Anyways, pumpkins are just almost impossible to find in Nicaragua. Or when you do find them, they cost a bajillion dollars (or maybe $25, but still!) I sulked for much of October, mourning my new life without pumpkin, but THEN! Then, we went to the store on Halloween and the pumpkins were marked down to $3! I made the cashier double-check the price, and it was for real! We bought one and spent the next week or so deciding what to do with it. I wanted to carve it, but Halloween was over, so we had to get a little more creative than that. We got home from church on Sunday and got to work. Chase cut it up into large chunks to microwave it. [Since there is no A/C, the oven works a bit like a furnace, so we try to avoid using it in the hot afternoons!] This is what it looked like in its microwavable form. We did that for about 15 minutes or so, but we found that steaming it on the stove worked better.
Meanwhile, I focused on the seeds. I found 2 good recipes – one salty and one sweet, so I created a little foil divider on our toaster oven pan to separate them. The salty (on the right) turned out great, but the sweet (on the left) was a disaster, as I failed to pay close attention to the recipe and turned them all into one large-brown-burned-clumpy-pumpkin seed-mess. It was quite sad as I only had 2/3 of a cup to begin with; now I was down to 1/3 of a cup.
After Chase was done steaming the pumpkin, he removed the peel and put the chunks in our handy Vita-Mix to turn it into pumpkin puree for future use in fantastic pumpkin recipes.
These are the seeds after they baked for 45 minutes. On the left: about to be eaten. On the right: about to be ruined.
And here are the 4 2-cup bags of pumpkin we ended up with. The top bag was only about 1 1/2 cups, so Chase ended up making pumpkin butter out of it. It is delicious!
And this. This is a present brought back from the States from Kristina. For which I love her a little bit more than I already did. I had it in my coffee this morning and it speaks fall to me (along with the refreshingly cool weather outside) better than anything else could (besides maybe a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks)! Thanks Kristina!

Global Leadership Summit

I love conferences. I just do. Passionate speakers, powerful worship, inspired learning. Sign me up. When I was an intern at Wildwood in 2006, I attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit with some of the staff and elders. I was with one of my best friends, Abby, and that made the experience oh-so-much better. We were both in the “What am I going to do with my life?” stage and I’m pretty sure we figured out as many times as there were speakers what the right answer was. At one point, Bono had me convinced that I was moving to Africa to get involved with the AIDS crisis. I’m not kidding.

While I was an intern, Chase asked me to marry him, so the question became “What are we going to do with our lives?” Fast forward 4 years, and here we are in Nicaragua (and celebrating one year of living here today!) Well, today and tomorrow we have the privilege of attending the same conference with the One by One/Camino de Vida staff and to no one’s surprise, I’m loving it (though I have to admit I’m missing Abby quite a bit.)

We heard 4 incredible speakers today.

• Bill Hybels spoke about how as leaders, we need to move people from the present reality “here” to the preferred future “there”, and how we cannot do that without hearing the voice of God.
• Jim Collins spoke on the Stockdale Paradox and how greatness is largely a matter of discipline.
• Adam Hamilton addressed the issue of when leaders fall, how none of us are exempt, and what to do to avoid falling. [Interestingly, he also spoke about grace which has been on my mind recently. He said that the final word of the church must always be grace, not judgment. That we serve the Lord who is friends with prostitutes, thieves and sinners. He said the gospel is for sinners and no one is beyond redemption. Well said.]
• Christine Cane spoke last and WOW. She spoke so fast that I couldn’t keep up, and her words were pure gold. She spoke about leading from a place of hope and how hope compels us to go into the darkness. Her story is heart-wrenching and powerful, but her faith in the Redeemer is remarkable. This one I’m going to purchase and listen to again. It’s that good.

    Here I am with one of our co-workers, Ileana. She’s pretty fantastic.

Paul, Jeremy, Yeril and Katie. We walked over to the mall for lunch. We had Papa Johns, and it was  delicious!

At the mall, there is a “tickle” wall. When you walk up to the wall, all the hands move towards you – perhaps attempting to tickle you? Or maybe it wants you to tickle the wall? I’m not really sure, but Paul and Dan, naturally, were enjoying this odd form of technology.

Glorious Slayer of Beasts and Vermin

With the small fortune of store credit to Bed Bath & Beyond we were gifted for our wedding, we purchased an OXO brand flyswatter.* This was a relatively extravagant purchase at $6 or $7, but its length and durability made it an irresistible addition to our lives.  And let me just say, I have been glad of it ever since.

Now let’s get something straight: at some time or other we’ve all bought or at least used the cheapest flyswatters that money can buy and are acutely aware of their inherent weaknesses.  Our swatter is nothing of the sort.  It is not the kind where you swing and the flimsy wire-hanger handle bends, nor the kind where the business end is so floppy you may as well use paper, but the kind you can hold with both hands if need be, the kind you could pull a muscle without damaging, the kind you could kill a wasp with, the kind you can snick flies out of midair with—the kind you can believe in.  Even in Oklahoma, many a 6- or 8-legged creature was neatly smacked, scooped up, and disposed of.  One time I even used it to usher an intruding frog to the door and flick him through it.  My preferred method for the larger bugs is an initial light, stunning smack followed by a jab or side chop (it’s cleaner that way).

To make the sport a little more interesting, there is a small hole in the swatter.  This fly-shaped hole offers airborne insects an unrealistic—but theoretically possible—second chance at life.

As you can imagine, since we moved to Nicaragua, this wonder has gotten even more use with the weekly roach killings, quarterly tarantula killings, and daily fly, mosquito, or other small pest killings.  I loved it before we moved here.  Now I don’t know how we would ever live without it.  As you can see in the photo, it has done its job well.  I love it so much that I should maybe name it.

*If you’re not familiar with OXO, virtually all of their products are made of or coated with a resilient rubbery, silicony material.  As a side note, I don’t believe this flyswatter is sold anywhere anymore.