Monday May 24 - Welcome to "El Ojoche"

It is always neat to go to a new place and see how people live. Last year we did not go to this community of El Ojoche, so it was awesome to do something new. We arrived in El Ojoche and began the day with a welcoming presentation from the community leaders. I was quite surprised and happy to see that they had planned out our week and were very organized. They had a big schedule for each day and this i greatly appreciated because it was now "their" project and us helping them instead of us leading them in the projects. Although our team supplied all the materials and financial aspects of the project, we really wanted them to take ownership of the project and realize that we are equal and working side by side in this. We worked on digging the foundation for a water tank in the morning and toured the community in the afternoon. The work was very hard and tiring. The sun was not out, but the heat was still intense and the humidity was rough. I soaked my shirt in sweat in about 10 minutes. The afternoon was a nice time to visit in the community and get to know a couple families. The layout of El Ojoche is more communal than Boaco simply because the houses are much closer together and everyone helps out their neighbor. The churches in this community are also very unique. I have never encountered a community quite like this where all the churches of every denomination including the Catholic church work together to meet the needs of their community. The pastors meet once a week together to discuss the issues going on the community so they can work together to solve them and not have 10 different efforts going on at once. It is so awesome and I praise God for this community's effort to put aside their differences and work together.