POST by FRAN: Highs & Lows

We are now eleven in the Brien family; Mum, Dad, I, Lorenzy-Ella, Sezni, Rafael, Billy, Yader, Jocasta, and recently an eight year-old named Brian and a five year-old named Oliver. Billy, Oliver and Brian go to the Capital Edge Community School or as we like to say “CECS”.

Yader works here at Capital Edge Community Centre, and he is the director of the center. Jocasta works in the school with the two year-olds in the creche. Dad stays home all day with us children and works at CECS. He also homeschools lorenzy, Sezni, Rafael and me. Mum goes to work at NCA (Nicaragua Christian Academy) and will finish working there in June.

Mum earns barely enough to be able to maintain our rather large family, and Dad is always on the computer to see if anyone wants to sponsor a student from CECS. He is usually on the computer from 4:00P.M until 3:00A.M!

My parents also have to pay for electricity, internet, water and we have to go grocery shopping for food. Sometimes we would go without water or electricity because we weren’t able to pay the bills! Once we went a whole week without water!

Before my Dad worked at an American school that is here for the rich Nicaraguans and he got paid more than my Mum did, so Mum would sometimes take us out to special places like the movies or to McDonald’s and we would have so much fun together.

Then our family grew a little bit and Dad decided to stop working at the American school so we don’t go out so often, because there is not so much income anymore.

We kids get a little bit of money by selling avocadoes and mangoes. It is fun, but hard because it’s a lot of work! It’s annoying though, because Sezni wants to buy a Nintendo Wii and so we haven’t spent any of the money just because we are saving up for a Wii!

It was a blessing that we were able to buy this wonderful house, because we were able to start CECS and the endless Friday night swimming with youth from around the community! It’s a lot of fun having the pool because of the never ending heat; everyone wants to swim in the pool!

I love it when the community comes to swim on Friday nights and for taekwondo time and stuff like that, because I have so many friends. I never knew that I would make so many friends within my community.

We really WERE brought here to help with the community, and a part of helping them is by making friendships. After you have made friends, everything else, like sharing God’s love, gets so much easier.

We have been living like this for at least four months and sometimes it’s hard, like with police that only pull you over to get bribes, and sometimes it’s a real blessing, like when we were invited to a Quince party or when I was invited to go see two new born babies! I live life how I’m supposed to. I love it.