Update #6: Thurs, July 24
/Thursday, July 24, 2025
On Thursday, Carla at Verbo prepared an awesome breakfast for our team for 7:30am. Our Driver/Host for the two days in Port was a Verbo Church deacon, financial administrator (accountant), and he also leads the worship team at the church. After breakfast, we left for the feeding program run by Verbo in the poorest of area of Port. Children from three barrios (poor neighborhoods) come to the program on Monday through Friday for lunch. It is open to anyone who can get there. Some of the children’s parents volunteer at the event and they are then able to eat as well. Verbo feeds between 300 and 500 kids every weekday at this location.
This week the young people are out of school for break, and so there were many more children than usual in attendance. We had to leave before the final count was known, but they estimated 700 children attended today. On this day, Young Life Nicaragua was volunteering, running a three-day camp around the feeding program. They ran games and sports activities for the older children and games like pin the tail on the donkey with the younger ones. Before the children ate, they heard a presentation about Jesus from two adults dressed as clowns. There was standing room only for the presentation, and the Young Life volunteers did an excellent job of keeping the kids very engaged. At one point, the presenters asked for six volunteers and a great number of kids (between 40-50) began to crowd forward and they had to stop the presentation to regain control and get folks sitting back down. I was a little tempted to run forward also, but thankfully was able to resist.
After the presentation, the children ate in shifts, from youngest to oldest, because there were not enough tables and chairs for everyone who was there. Fortunately, the eating area was covered because there was a short, hard rain that came over during the time we were there.
After the feeding program, we returned to Verbo Church property around 12pm. Some of us showered again and we all rested a bit before an amazing lunch at 2pm. After lunch, we met Pastor/Dr. Ernesto at his Orthopedic clinic. He is one of two orthopedic surgeons working for the government at the hospital in Port. One By One partnered with him four years ago, along with the Mennonites in Nicaragua, to help him open a clinic that serves the poor. As an Orthopedic doctor, he serves patients who can pay as well as those who cannot, and all of those in between, so the clinic is now self-sustaining. Every patient is a mission for him. His wife is an anesthesiologist and she runs the pharmacy. In the four years they have been open, they have already completed Phase 2 of their plan, where they added a lab and an area to see more patients. So the clinic is growing and doing extremely well. He would like to purchase an X-ray machine and add additional patient rooms so that is on his prayer list for a future phase.
Currently, the only place to obtain an X-ray in Port is at the government run hospital. Dr. E cannot successfully send patients there for X-rays. The poorest of patients are only seen for X-rays at the hospital after waiting for weeks to see a doctor, then being referred for an X-ray weeks later. He would love to be able to provide this service for the community. He has been kind to treat Blanca for knee and shoulder issues, and was able to see her while she was there.
We returned to Verbo to prepare for a service at Dr. E’s church at 6pm. At church, we had a vibrant time of worship through songs and prayer. Dave gave the message, with Regan interpreting. Dave had asked our host from Verbo to sing a song before the message and he chose, “How Great is Our God”. It was fun to sing along in English with a song we knew well. After the service the Pastor/Dr., his wife, and our host and his wife and two children went to dinner with our team. We tried four different places before we found a restaurant that would serve us at 9:30pm. As we finished dinner and were leaving after a great visit, we found that our host (and driver) had locked his key inside his car. We worked together for about an hour to get the driver side window ajar enough for our 6-year-old grandson to stick his hand in and grasp the wallet on the dash that contained the key. He had to hang onto the wallet until it cleared the window outside the car, all while being afraid his arm was going to be chopped off by the window. He was able to do so successfully and was our hero for the night! We were back at Verbo about 12am. The doctor and his wife visited a short time with us in our room and had a reluctant goodbye. They both had to be at work at the hospital at 7am, and then work at their clinic in the afternoon and evening.