Family Day at NCAM and My Evolving Role

Greetings from Nicaragua!  It's time for another update.  NCA continues to grow by leaps and bounds both in numbers and in qualitative ways.  This update will share a little about NCA Matagalpa's recent family event, news about refining my position at NCA, my houseguest and support update.  Enjoy!

This year's 7th grade class presenting at the family day celebration.
Breyling is there.  Can you find him?

Family and Community at NCA

We have 140 students, and had around 400 visitors.

Yesterday was family day at NCA Matagalpa.  We combined Mother's Day, Father's day, and Children's day into one single celebration of the family.  Parents decorated the court, filled it with flowers, and provided pastries, fruit, and a chocolate fountain.  Students performed dramas, poems, songs.  They made their parents laugh and they brought them to tears.  The teachers even threw in a surprise presentation reenacting a skit from a locally beloved comedy show "Chavo del Ocho."  Although imperfect, it was a beautiful and inspiring glimpse of the kind of community we want to create here in Matagalpa.  See More pictures on our facebook page here.

Mothers/Architects presenting their design
for a cafeteria, developed by parents and students.

We've seen that community showing itself in other ways, too.  As we near final stages of building a sports field, parents at the school have been invited to participate in envisioning how they would like to see the school grow.  This week, two mothers (both architects) presented plans that had been developed by a group of parents to build a cafeteria.  It was inspiring to see the quality of their designs and their heart for the students.  They were building on ideas of students, who had been given the opportunity to come up with initial concepts for cafeteria.  We plan to start moving foward with excavating as we also start construction on the second half of the new row of classes (first half finished in December).

Refining of my position

Throughout the past year and a half, I've been stationed primarily at NCA Matagalpa.  If you will recall from earlier posts, I've taken on a few sizeable responsabilities at NCAM because there is simply no one else to take care of them.  They include overseeing the maintenance man (who is also our landcaper/gardener), overseeing the security team (made up of 7-8 guards), and playing a role on the construction committee as the main facilitator between our head of construction in Managua and our contractor on site.  This has been a year and a half of much learning and stretching.  Probably the most challenging part has been that for the first time in my life, I have had to manage people.  I came close to the breaking point a couple of times.  I have hired at least 7 people, fired at least 3, and had to overcome several challenges to keep the people we have engaged and happy as contributors of our community.

The construction committee planning
the next steps of the building project.

As of August of this year, Those roles are going to begin phasing out of my agenda as I pass them on to a new member of our team.  A former collaborator from the Nehemiah Center will be joining us as the Manger of Operations at NCAM.  While I am glad to be able to focus more on my main job as Director of Technology for all three NCA schools, I have mixed feelings about letting go of maintenance, guards, and construction.  I have formed relationships with people in all of these areas, and will have to let go of them to some degree.

On the other hand, I will be able to focus more on other relationships that I've neglected throughout the last year and a half and reinforce growth in other ways.  I will be focusing on helping the school choose an accounting program, getting teachers at Nejapa to use computers more in their classes, creating materials for incoming teachers to be able to use the technological resources we have available for them, designing technical courses, building up RedProCom to support other Christian schools in Nicaragua.  This will be an exciting change, but also a challenging one.  Please pray for me in this area.

My houseguest

Things are going well with Breyling, whom I invited to live with me and attend NCA Matagalpa.  In terms of grades, at the end of the first marking period (half of the semester) he had an average of over 90%.  Quite impressive.  He has been pretty responsible at doing his own homework.  He has also been handling a few chores around the house.  About two or three weeks ago, he started a learning experience with a local carpenter.  I set it up in an effort to give him the opportunity to learn new skills, responsibility, and a new perspective on what it means to work for a living.  Initially, Breyling was hesitant start.  As we all know, the unknown can be a scary thing.  On the way to the shop the first day he told me, wrinkling his nose, "I don't want to start today."  Just one week later, however, he reported that the best part of his day was going to work.  He spends his time sanding and sweeping, but will do more as he learns and as there is opportunity.  He's also getting to see how the whole shop functions.  There are probably about 7 workers there, one of which is close to his own age and also there to learn.

Breyling showing his mom and sisters
around the shop he's learning at.

Yesterday, for Family Day, Breyling's mom and two sisters made the trek from Managua to be there for him.  The presentation was a great experience for them.  Aftwards, Breyling and I took them to the shop so they could see what he had been learning.  He proudly showed them the different parts of the shop and the tools that they used.

As this year moves forward, I am already thinking about what next year will hold.  There are a lot of challenges to keeping this going.  My role with NCA requires a good deal of mobility, which comes into conflict with being responsible for a young person who is tied to one school.  I'm weighing options and would appreciate your prayers.

Support

Thank you to those who have supported me throughout the past year.  As you may know, my fiscal year with Christian Reformed World Missions runs from July-June, so I am closing in on another year-end.  I am close to meeting my budget, but not quite there yet and may need a little more help.  If you think you might like to contribute but would like to know more specifics, please contact me via email or facebook.  If you would like to make a contribution now, you may do that through the support page.

Prayer Items:

• Pray for the school's leadership as we try to steer the school in a way that really brings God's grace to Nicaragua in a wonderful way.
• Pray for me as I transition into the position I signed up for.  Vision, energy, and excitement for impacting schools with technology.
• Pray for me as I try to figure out the feasibility of continuing to support Breyling in the same way next year.