july 2nd

it has been so long! my apologies!
Although there is internet almost everywhere, it is often hard to find a spot/time to sit and blog. Since my last post we have been so many places and had great experiences. Here is a quick list of places we have been to thus far (stayed at least one night): Managua, Masaya, Granada, Isla Ometepe, San Carlos, El Castillo, San Juan del Norte, Managua again, San Juan Del Sur, Playa Matilda, Jaco Costa Rica, San Jose, and now panama city!
After my last post we said bye to the guys we were travelling with and headed the rest of the way down Rio San Juan. We got to San Juan del Norte, a tiny town with one hostel, no roads and no electricity until 2pm. Here, we stubbornly came to a realization that has begun to change our whole trip. As many of you know, Eric and i came here wanting to love locals everywhere we went. We wanted to get off the beaten track and really experience local culture. We have had and will continue to have great experiences with locals, however, things have changed. Jesus did incarnational ministry. HE came to earth, from heaven and dwelled with man. We realized that really doing incarnatoinal ministry in local cultures is next to impossible, especially if we want to travel to more than one village our three months. On the other hand, the backpacking community is transient. People meet in hostels for a night and maybe spend a day or two together, maybe not. Hostels are set up with huge communal spaces for eating, drinking, and conversations. We realized that instead of running from the backpacking community "off the beaten track" God could be leading us into these communities where we can really do incarnational ministry. So, we headed back to managua and have gotten back on backpack row hitting up more touristy areas and staying in hostels with lots of people, forming friendships, hearing/sharing stories, praying for opportunities to talk about jesus with a group of people who seldom have any idea who he is, and meeting AWESOME people. Of course, we will still love local poeple, eat in small family restaurants and play as much street soccer as we can between now and august.

So, from San Juan del Norte, we headed back up the rio san juan and took a miserable bus ride all the way to managua, where we stayed with the Sharpes for 3 days, did laundry, rested and got ready for the rest of the trip. We also got to visit Mandy in managua and met a great guy named Cobren who let us help out at his ministry center for a day. Mandy is working with some really sweet girls at an orphanage in managua and is doing an awesome job. After Managua we went down to San JUan del sur which is the biggest surfing town in nicaragua and went to an awesome hostel called casa oro. HEre, we met a guy named Bubba who pointed us toward another hostel on a less populated beach where we could stay for cheaper so we went out there with him and a canadian couple and stayed 3 days. We swam, read, surfed ( I caught an overhead wave and succesfully turned left down the beach), ate HUGE oysters, raw muscles and clams that had just been taken out of the rocks in the water by some nicaraguan divers, and hung out on our basically private beach the five of us every night. We went back into the town for 2 more nights after leaving that beach and stayed at Casa Oro again. Here we met an awesome guy named Josh from richmond and also ran into one of our friends that we met in Granada. We had an incredible night our last night in San Juan Del Sur where we had multiple conversations about Jesus. Also, i met a woman who works for a non-profit organization working with women--many of whom are prostitues or victims of domestic violence-- who, after listening to eric and i talk about how we think a man should treat a woman invited me to come and speak at the center in august. She says i have free range on what i choose to say, so although it is not a christian organization i cannot wait for this awesome opportunity to preach the gospel.
From San Juan Del sur we crossed the border into Costa Rica and hopped local buses all the way to Jaco Costa Rica where we met up with Brandon Duke and Josh Poe. We slept on hammocks outside their hostel had an awesome time with them and the crew staying at Christian Surfer hostel. We hung out with some local kids, went to a YWAM mission site and watched a lot of soccer. It was crazy hanging out with a group of CNU guys in Costa Rica--definately felt like we were at VA beach.Costa Rica is nice, and we enjoyed seeing the guys, but it is very touristy and overpriced and almost all the backpackers we met encouraged us to skip over it and go straight to Panama.
So, two nights ago we took a sixteen hour bus ride from San jose to Panama city and got here yesterday evening. We met some really cool israeli girls on the bus on the way over and went to the same hostel as them. They made us easily the best dinner we have had this trip so we are hoping to continue travelling with them haha. It is a HUGE colonial mansion which fits 100 people and has awesome social areas and probably the coolest bar i have ever seen (pictures to come).
Today we were walking down the street to find a place to watch the Brazil v holland game and some guys called down to us from their apartment and invited us to watch with them. It was awesome. They lived in a room smaller than my bedroom in a large apartment building. Most of the windows in the building were blown out or borded up, the stairs felt like they might collapse underneath us, but when we got upstairs the guys gladly shared their one fouton (probably mispelled) with us to watch the game. If it stops raining we are gonna go play soccer with the guys tonight. Tomorrow, we are gonna go visit the canal as well as be super tourists and rent roller blades and skate through a huge park that runs along the water and is home to all sorts of cool wildlife and trees haha. Pray i dont die...its been at least ten years since my roller hockey days at Tuckahoe elementary with the cousins.

on a side note, Erics bag was stolen in San Jose and we are now down to one backpack with 4 shirts and 3 pairs of shorts for the two of us haha. Luckily nothing happened to us and the passports were both in my backpack.


also-- quick shout out to England, Holland and Denmark! we miss you guys and cant wait till you come to New york!

--more updates to come
- David