Making Tracks

Hello again readers and friends!

    The last few days have been outstanding with a few tough moments. C'est la vie. I'll start with the tough stuff because it's those times that make the good ones so much better. A wise old woman here once told me, "The bitter seeds yield the sweetest fruits."
    This week the last remaining founder of the Sandinista Front, Tomás Borges, died at 81 years of age. For the people here, as it was explained to me, this would be like a Founding Father dying in the U.S., and so the people here have been celebrating his life, and large parts of the city were shut down to create pedestrian zones. This also came the day after International Worker's Day. So there were a lot of detours and traffic clogs which delayed me two and a half hours to get home from teaching. At one place, I was stuck going uphill, and I ran out of gas. I had to walk a kilometer down the road to find a gas station only to be redirected further down the road. At that gas station, they told me to go to another two or three kilometers in the opposite direction. I tried the first place again, and they helped me. By the time I got back to my truck, all the traffic had cleared. So I got home in time to change shirts and teach an English class. It was a lesson in patience, and I tried to remember 1 Thessolonians 5:16-18 which says, "Rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ."
    So on with the good stuff. I am nine days out from meeting with the Costa Rican representative of our MMA organization and a 4-day training camp in the jungle. Yes, I will be training in the rain forest! In six weeks, I have my first MMA fight in Panama, and on Tuesday, the biggest news yet: I am going to Argentina for my second fight a months down the road. These trips renew my visa here in Nicaragua and allow me to legally stay in the country to keep working here. My flights, food, and lodging are also taken care of by the event promoters. This works out perfectly because it allows me to keep my sponsorship funds allocated strictly to my mission. The best part, it opens the doors for my students to be able to do compete abroad as well.
     This provides them the opportunity to use their martial arts skills to work as missionaries in other Latin American countries as we are not only representing Nicaragua, but more importantly Christ. So the relationships we form in this are links to strengthen other Christians and lead others to Christ! It also has a social development aspect, as these youth will also be able earn money from the competitions to pay their way through college. Most of their families can't afford to put them through a university, so this provides the means for those who are disciplined enough to stick with it.

God is good all the time!

Y se lo repito a ustedes, "No vayas por el camino que te lleve, pero ve por dónde no hay camino y deja huellas."

God bless you,
Seth