(Please note this blog is mostly a joke and my team and I making fun of ourselves.)
God has blessed me with a team of five girls with very unique and individual personalities. I will start by explaining a little bit about each of my team members.
First, we have Sarah, or “dance mom Sarah” (as we like to call her) who is currently going through a divorce and is taking a break from the position of “Mom”
Then we have the girls who dubbed themselves as “Tiffason” (a combination of their names Tiffany & Alison) Let’s just say they bring along a lot of comic relief & interesting moments combined with poor Spanish speaking skills.
Next comes Bethany. Our little shopaholic with a bright personality & bright hair to match (we are currently dying it red)
Followed by our team leader Diana that lives in a box in Chicago. By that I mean she often has no idea what we are talking about when we think it is a semi normal thing to be talking about.
So, now to begin the many stories associated with my team. First off, our actual team name is Voice of Truth. Once we arrived in Nicaragua however, we thought that another name fit us much better. It came along slowly by our team being selected last, always seeming to be the ones picking up weeds or trash, and always getting stuck in disastrous situations. From picking up weeds three times in one week, to walking for six miles to get home because of a protest, to making a scene in a public market because all six of us fell off of a bike taxi. Through this series of unfortunate events we have grown to call our team the “Junior Varsity Missionaries”. We view this name differently than most… we view it as a term of endearment and as a way of saying “there is room for improvement”.
To go along with walking six miles home there is a story. It started with us pulling weeds at the compound in the morning for about two hours. After we finished loading the weeds into the back of the huge truck we were ready to head to the dump. We drove 6 miles away and then down a road that led us into beautiful greenery and the best view of the volcano we have seen. We were so excited because we felt like it was God rewarding us for our hard work in the morning. We unloaded the weeds and were quickly heading back down the path to the main road. When we got on the main road however, traffic was completely stopped. After sitting in the shade on the side of the road for a few minutes, buying ice cream from a man passing by, and talking with our driver we discovered a protest was going on. Our driver Mario told us that these often last for hours and it would be better if we walked back to the project. When I asked him how long it would take he replied with about an hour. So we exchanged some looks of “should we actually walk home?” and proceeded to do so in the hot Nicaraguan sun. We made it home after an hour and a half to some leftovers from lunch and sunburned skin. It ended with us walking through the gate chanting our new team name “JVM! JVM! JVM!”
Even better than that story is the one of all six of us trying to fit on a bike taxi in a public market place. It started with my team wanting to spend our day off in the local city called Leon. Leon is 45 minutes to an hour away depending on which mode of transportation you use. My team took a public bus for around 45 minutes and got dropped of at the bus terminal which is in the middle of a crowded market place. 6 American girls make enough of a scene as it is so I was trying my best to get my team a mode of transportation to the center of Leon so we could get out of the market place. All over Nicaragua they have bike taxis that take people from place to place on a leisurely bike ride. They have a man in the bike riding the bike and then two wheels in the front with a bench seat and a covering in case of rain. I talked to a younger man who was sitting with his bike taxi empty and asked how much it would cost to be taken to the center of Leon. When he told me the price I asked in shock if he could take all 6 of us. He replied with a yes and hurried us onto his bike taxi. After we all crammed into it (barely fitting might I add) he started to peddle. We made it all of six feet going less than one mile an hour when the disaster started. It was slow motion I swear. We started to tip forward toward the ground ever so slowly without a word. Nobody said anything or even made a sound. We simply toppled to the ground in the hot sun and make a huge scene in the middle of the market place in Leon. Once we finally got the bike taxi off of the top of us and got off the floor we looked around to find literally a hundred people staring at the gringas. We had just drawn an unbelievable amount of attention to ourselves. We were in shock and a little mortified (at least I was) and we started walking away from the situation as quickly as possible.
It was these experiences and many more that created a unique bond between my team and I that cannot be broken. We will always be JVM. We will always have unbelievably unfortunate moments happen to us that create unforgettable memories. I love it. I would not trade it for the world. I would repeat all of it over and over again just for the bond I have with the girls on my team. We are and will forever be JVM.
{more stories to come I am sure}
JVM Probz
