Miraflor

Last week, we took a trip to Miraflor, which is the rural territory of Esteli.  It's about a one and a half hour bus ride up into the mountains.  The bus leaves at 6am ... so it's easy to miss if you don't get up early enough ...

To sum it up short, it was a hiking-preaching adventure and we went through trails that were literally in people's backyards... very cool.  A pair of us would do a house and after talking about the good news, we would ask them the best way to the next finca (or farm), and that's what we did pretty much until we hopped on the last bus out which was around 3:30pm or something.

Here's a whole bunch of pics...
(By the way, if you click on any of the pictures, they come up much larger...)

After the bus ride, we hopped in the back of a pick-up to take us farther up the road and to the territory.  From left to right you've got: Ajah, Meagan, Bridget, Phil, Jordan, and Bismark.

There was this farm that serves good breakfast that we were heading to first off, but in order to get there we had to pass through this little obstacle course.  The old pieces of wood were no where near stable, so could have been easy to have fallen in, none of us did though...

It was common to see people on horse-back... their main method of transport in the mountains...

 Finally got to the breakfast place, and had to take a picture... typical Nica-breakfast includes, eggs, beans, tortilla, black coffee, and guajada, not sure how to spell that, but it's just a Nicaraguan-made cheese thing...

Jordan and Phil coming back from the first door of the day...

As you can see we walked the trails through people's farms

Felipe y Bismark Rojas

Here's Bismark posing, but it was mainly to give you an idea of what a home might look like out in the mountains

From house to house...

A farm growing cabbage I believe... all the produce being grown out in miraflor included: potatoes, cabbage, coffee, beans, all kinds of fruits, and corn.... to name a few.

Fruits such as bananas and plantains...

This was a neat scene... the group traveling caravan style through the fields past a couple horses

There was a lot of walking...

A real lot of walking.... but it was a blast

Just a random scene of someone's house... it was the only one with a pond like that

Along the way, had the opportunity to take pics of some great views ...

I took a pic of this little pigster that was tied to a tree... It kind of makes you want one as a pet until you realize what a monstrosity they grow up into...

And lastly, a nice pic of our group for the day.  From left to right: Arturo, Ajah, Meagan, Bismark, Jordan, Phil.... Bridget and another sister, Michelle, weren't with us for the majority of the day because they did studies while we took the trails and did house to house.  This pic was taken on this dude's lookout which had a great view.  He let us have lunch there and rest for a little while... until he had the brilliant idea to charge us 5 cords each ('bout 25 cents) for the service of being on his lookout.  

That's about all I have to say about that... 

So...people we met in Miraflor were always welcoming to listen to some good news from the bible...  If they weren't working, we were usually invited inside to sit and talk for a while...  and after a warm, friendly conversation, they were happy to give us directions to the next place.

Although wiped out by the end of the day and basically passed out on that bus ride home, it was an incredible experience to see and preach the good news in the Nicaraguan country-side.

Enjoy