Personal Narrative: Moving To Nicaragua

The first time I met my little brother I was five years old sitting on a bed in Guatemala. My family decided that we wanted to add a new edition. When he was in Guatemala he was named Juan Carlos. We had to take two trips to Guatemala, one to visit my brother and one to then take him home. There was a long amount of time in between these trips. Once enough of the paperwork was done we were able to visit my baby brother.

Each house-- painted a very vibrant, dazzling color, purple, orange, yellow, green, and pink. I had never seen houses like that in the United States the usual house colors are gray, white, tan, blue, very dull colors. The sight of these vivid houses was just a small glimpse of this beautiful country. As I nervously traveled without my family for the first time the lush terrain of Costa Rica dotted with colorful houses welcomed me.

to my family. It is hard for us to survive in a totally unfamiliar country and we

The classic saying, “There’s always someone who has it worse than you” (Shaggy- Keepin’ it Real), didn’t come true to me until I had first-hand experience. As a child, I grew up in the lower middle class. So I wasn’t rich nor super poor. My mother came to the United States from El Salvador in the 1980’s. She has never taken my brother and me to her home country.

I have always considered myself a great student. When I lived in the Dominican Republic I was the best student of my class. I won several math competitions, and the relationship with my teachers was great. I was invincible, or at least that's what I thought until I moved to New York. Moving from the Dominican Republic almost convinced me of something my sister said a few months after I left, “some people are smart only in Spanish.” I asked myself who could possibly be smart in one language and stupid in a different one, but later I found myself being that person.

The pilot said, “Ready for take off!” I was dreading those words and the day in which I had to leave everything behind. How could I leave Colombia? My house? My family? My friends? My whole life?

Someone once told me “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” I guess it wasn’t important to me at the time and therefore I chose to ignore it, little I knew the wisdom these words carried.

Going to another country can be a little bit scary, especially if you are going to a third world country and you don’t plan on staying in the safe touristy areas. With this blog, I hope to appeal to others who are going on a mission trip to Nicaragua for the first time. Through my personal narrative, I hope to calm those first time jitters that people are inclined to get before doing something outside of their comfort zone. It can help when you have an idea about what you are getting into, but there are some things that no one can understand until they have been there, and that’s okay.

Mexico represent a lot to me. My family moved to Mexico when I was only 6 years old, I went to school there and spent most of my childhood and teenage years in this remarkable and beautiful country. For those and many other reasons I still have lots of good friends and family who live there. The connections are inevitable. I feel culturally connected and one of the things I miss the most is walking around the narrow streets of the towns I grew up and talking to the most friendly people around the neighborhoods buying and trying all sorts of street foods or little cravings (antojitos) as they called them in Mexico. The warm climate and going to the beach almost every week was always a plus and something to remember, since I lived near the ocean.

“Mangos, mangos, 3 Quetzales !!”. This is the first thing I heard and saw on my trip to Guatemala this past summer. I saw a 9 year old barefoot boy struggling to walk through the busy streets of Guatemala carrying a woven basket that contained ripe and bright orange mangos inside of it. I turned around to my dad and said, “Dad look!! Oh my gosh!! Shouldn’t he be in school?”. My dad always told me about Guatemala and the continuous struggles that he and others faced on a daily basis when he lived there. For the first time I actually saw what my dad talked to about with my very own eyes. What I was seeing was crystal clear and not what I hoped to be a dream.

I was born in dominican republic santiago in May 21, 1997. I'm 19 years old. My weight is 132 pound and my height is 5.9 feet. My skin color is dark and my eyes color are black. My favorite color is yellow and my favorite singer is Daddy Yankee. I'm a student from Bronx Community College. My major is Liberal Arts & Biology because I want something related with medicine. Now I was thinking about become a physical therapy or doctor with a specialization in pediatric.

What was the process of my conversion like? I’ll begin with this year, all the way back to my trip in Guatemala. I struggled to understand what belief was and what being a follower of Christ really was. I was trying to understand the faith with my own intelligence, which constantly failed me. On top of that I was living without morals, saying, doing, and thinking whatever I pleased. This all, plus sickness, made my trip to Guatemala very challenging. As the year went on I still tried to live in Christ on my own will, which isn’t living in Christ at all. I would read his word but only some days instead of every day. What I didn’t realize is that I need his word every day. Because this world is evil and unclear, but his word gives ultimate clarity.

Imagine a time where you were at your lowest, a time in your life that nothing seemed to make

My father had cardiac problems. He used to Nicaragua. I was eleven when he suffered a stroke. Immediately my brother toke him to the hospital but there was not a cardiologist not a neurologist available. The only neurologist available was in Managua the capital which is approximately four hours away from Jinotega It was too late when we arrived to Managua he had passed away. Three hours later he started breathing .That was defiantly miracle. My father had an intestinal surgery two weeks after. Then he returned back to the U.S. My Father couldn’t move half of his body and he was losing weight. He saw the doctor and they found out that, Nicaraguan surgeon mistakenly left a small residue of a contaminated gauge in his body due to that my father

What’s it like being in Guatemala? What’s it like being on a plane? I asked these questions to myself. On June 29, 2012 I had the opportunity to find answers to these questions, however in a way that I wished would have not happened. My reason for going to Guatemala wasn’t to rest and have fun. It was for my grandpa’s funeral, a day that changed me forever. A day where I learned what it really means to be grateful.