Nicaragua Update #2
Friday, July 17, 2026
As of this evening, the door key saga is still unresolved. They have bolted the front door shut. Dave is using a side door that leads to another property so he has to get the neighbors to let him in their gate every time he comes and goes. They have been extremely kind about it thus far. The neighbors attend Pastoras church so Dave has known them for many years on a casual basis. But he is getting to know them on a more personal level this trip.
The guys went to four different places during the day before they found a replacement lock, but it still didn’t work. They will look at one more place tomorrow. Meanwhile, they contacted a welder who they will need to remove and replace the lock. Regan and Dave also put a new shower head on his shower. After using it he said the new one was heavenly because the previous one had no pressure and leaked around the connection, pouring down the wall, leaving only a drip to bathe with.
This afternoon, the guys had a lunch meeting with the Director of Verbo School and the Pastor of Verbo Church in Veracruz, a husband and wife duo. We are holding the upcoming CBS conference at this church. The Pastor shared the progress using CBS with their youth. They began the meeting at a lunch place and then relocated to a coffee shop to continue the conversation, meeting from 12-3pm. As we shared yesterday, Dave is not able to stay at the Verbo property this trip. We have stayed there all except two times in the last 21 years. Their water was cut off so they can replace the water tanks and piping. They are installing concrete towers that won’t rust or deteriorate. The new piping will provide better water pressure. There are other improvements also happening, but that was the one that kept Dave from being able to stay. With these improvements, they are going to be more appealing to folks who may want to stay at the team center, but the Director assured Dave he would always have a place to stay and he was “grandfathered in”.
After the lunch meeting, they returned to Regan and Blanca’s house where city employees were working on the road outside the Downs house again. The workers agreed to put a 10” pipe in front of his property for the sewage to pass through. Everyone else had a ditch cut in front of their house and sewage passed uncovered. The guys had to go to five different places before finding a 10” pipe, and they only had one. So they found an 8” pipe at another location, and Edgar is going to build a box to marry the two and cover the additional distance, then cover it all up with gravel. As a result of the road work, the new road is now higher than the Down's entrance gate, so the challenge to work through at this point is how to handle that so heavy rains don’t flood the school area.
Between 6-7pm, Dave and Regan visited a couple of Veracruz English Academy (VEA) students and parents to obtain permission for their children to participate in the school outing tomorrow. The day ended with 67 students confirmed. Six students will not be able to come; four are sick and two are out of town.
After the home visits, the guys picked up Blanca then Pastor Mani and his wife Jaritza and went to dinner to talk about lunch for the CBS training, Mani's new role as President of the pastor group in Menuda, CBS in his church, and the upcoming medical mission to Bluefields planned for March, 2027. Both Pastor and his wife want to go, agreed to promote the trip within their church, and they will lead and be the primary contact with any others from our partner churches who want to be a part of the team. The group closed La Nani restaurant down, as they were the last ones to leave. The security guard locked the gate behind them at 9:30pm (1/2 hour after closing).
Dave dropped everyone off and was home by 10:00pm. When he arrived, Rudolpho, the neighbor, had to come out and let Dave in the gate to get to his place. Dave invited him to the Men of Prayer meeting in the morning at sun up. Rudolpho decided he might as well attend since he would have to get up at 4:45am to let Dave out of the gate anyway. They had a good laugh about it. Dave is excited about Rudolpho coming along tomorrow. He told Dave that he had heard about the meeting but had never been invited. He further shared that he didn’t know anyone well who had gone. He seemed very excited about it.
More later...thank you again for reading and for your prayers for the trip!
In Christ,
Katy, on behalf of Dave