Nicaragua 2015 ~ The Maids at Quinta Primavera

Tuesday morning we headed over to the other guest house called Quinta Primavera. This is the house where Jonas and Barbi lived when they were missionaries with the Mennonite Voluntary Service program in the 1970s. This is the house they were sleeping in when the 1972 earthquake hit and the house was destroyed. 

Lois and Marcos (who own and run Quinta Shalom where we were staying) do not own Quinta Primavera, but they run it. They are in charge of staffing it and scheduling guests. We toured it a bit and also saw the smaller house where Jonas and Barbi lived after their first son, Jeff, was born.

In the US, poinsettias are smallish house plants we buy at Christmas. In Nicaragua, they are trees!

In the US, philodendrons are smallish houseplants that are easy to grow. In Nicaragua, they are HUGE vines and leaves that overtake mango trees.

In addition to spending the day with our Compassion kids, our second goal and purpose was to minister to the maids who work at Quinta Primavera and Quinta Shalom. We had 1.5 hours in the morning with the ladies at Quinta Primavera, then headed to Quinta Shalom for an afternoon session with the other group of ladies.

Barbi found and bought these beautiful study Bibles for the ladies and went over how they could best be used. Each day she also had a small Bible lesson for the lades. They are all pretty involved in the local church and were so excited about having these Bibles.

My mom had also arranged two different crafts for the ladies to do - one each day. The first was a banner that said "Gozo" (joy) and the second was to stamp and make cards.

Mom also brought quite a few gifts (necklaces, bows, nailpolish and more) for each of the ladies. They had fun "shopping" and then showing off what they chose.

On our second and final day, the maids blessed us by buying us lunch from Tip Top (the same restaurant chain where we ate with our Compassion kids).