Nicaragua Newsletter for Family, Friends, and Goldendale church

October 1, 2007
Dear Friends and Family,
It has been a very busy last month with Hurricane Felix hitting us on September 4. Since then we have been able to help the villages with some food and gas and oil for their chainsaws so they could cut fallen trees out of the roads. Many large trees fell so now it is also a race against time to turn them into useable lumber before the termites turn them into sawdust. Many houses need repaired. We spent a few days with our chainsaw helping clear trees off the top of houses, roads, and trails.
Many donor agencies from all over the world are currently here distributing food and supplies. Groups are here from America, China, Japan, Germany, etc. Currently, the basic needs are being met. The major problem will be that soon all the groups with their donations will go back to their respective countries and the new crops will not be due to be harvested until around April of this coming year. January, February and March will be hard months for the people here.
Here are some of the other items we are also continuing to work on:

Runway
The runway is done and ready! The inspection for the runway has been delayed 4 times since the middle of August. We are hoping that the latest date for inspection sometime in October will hold. Hopefully the date will stay and the inspection will go smoothly.

Pharmacy
The local authorities have given us permission to sell basic medications here in Tronquera. This does not include prescription medications. To sell those we still will need permission from the regional level.

Work program
Following the hurricane the work program is tapered off a little as people work to try and set their own homes, villages and plantations back in order. There are still some people working for food which they need since the hurricane destroyed their rice crop.

Transportation
We would like to ask special prayer from everyone concerning this issue. Following the hurricane we found that our usefulness here was severely handicapped because we did not have a truck. We were not able to bring building supplies into villages that needed it. We were not able to transport people that needed to go the hospital. But most importantly we were and are unable to help bring food into villages that had great needs. We have donations to purchase food for hurricane relief, yet the
cost of getting the food to the villages will be inflated because of the local transportation we will have to use since we have no truck yet.
ADRA was working hard to distribute food and medicine to many villages, we were not able to participate because we had no way to get to where ADRA was working and we were not able to assist ADRA with their deliveries.
We would like special prayer that the Lord will provide a truck or the money for a truck by Jan 16, 2008. Over the next few months please make this matter a special prayer.

Future Plans
Our plans changed with the coming of Hurricane Felix the beginning of September.
Our focus is now distributing food and medicine to villages in need.
We were surprised a few weeks ago that our family has purchased tickets for us to visit America this Christmas. We will be leaving Nicaragua November 7, and returning the middle of January. We hope to work and save some money during this time. We will be happy to speak in any churches in our travels through Washington, Montana, and Wyoming.

Our web page is updated frequently with new pictures and short stories or items of interest on our blog page.

www.hanleymissions.org
Thank you for your support and prayers.
God Bless,
Clint and Marilyn Hanley

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Wings Over Nicaragua Mission
Nicaragua, Central America
hanley@softhome.net
www.hanleymissions.org

Donation information:
Goldendale SDA Church
Attn: Treasurer
PO Box 71
Goldendale, WA 98620
Make a memo on the check to "Wings Over Nicaragua"
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We are writing this from a ham radio email connection which is very slow. Please delete the original letter when replying to this letter.

Hurricane Update

Dear Family,
It looks like Hurricane Felix went about right over the top of us. Our house held together fine, but it was creaking sometimes. Thanks to the cement bottom, it was solid. We lost almost all the trees all around our house, now it looks like it has been clear cut.
In Tronquera village two houses collapsed, and one very large church (Moravian). No one was hurt. Now comes the rain. Already the nearby creeks are higher than we have ever seen them, and the rain will come for sometime more. Fortunately, our house and the village are on high ground.
Food will be a concern for the whole village in the next few days and weeks (maybe months). We hope to use some resources to purchase some if there is any available and bring it here. I am sure most of the plantations are decimated.
We are thankful our house is standing and our radio antenna is still up!
Thank you for your prayers,
Clint and Marilyn

Trip up the Rio Coco

Hello to all.
I wanted to write you about the exciting week we have had.
Last Sabbath we had visitors!! Doesn't happen often in this part of the world. Our friends from Francis Sirpi, Mike and Diana Halverson, are in Nicaragua doing some work and stopped to visit us on Sabbath afternoon. We really enjoyed their visit. They had some people visiting them, Jack and Lyn Hall with their daughter, Reanan. Reanan is only 5 so the kids hit it off just right.
Sunday morning we went to Francis Sirpi to visit Mike and Diana and help with some radio email problems they were having. That was also a really nice day.
Tuesday, Mike and Diana were going to Waspam so I hitched a ride with the children. It gave the children a chance to play more with their new friend and talk to all the family in Waspam on the phone. We met up with Lyn's father and stepmother who flew in on the plane. They were all planning a trip up the Rio Coco river. They invited our whole family to come along. Well this presented a little bit of a problem since I was in Waspam with the kids and Clint was at home. I wrote to Clint asking
but of course did not receive a reply in the following 5 minutes. To make a long story shorter, we all spent the night in Waspam and left at 6 am the next morning on the river.
It was a perfect day with cloud cover and hardly any rain. In the late afternoon as we were getting back to Waspam it rained really hard. We all had rain coats so we faired really well. The rain stopped as we got to the dock so we left our borrowed rain coats in the boat and got in the truck for the 5 minute ride home. Well it rained again, really hard. The kids were still wearing their coats since we brought theirs instead of borrowing them. They didn't get wet. Clint wore his rain coat so
he only got a little wet while walking, but I lent my jacket to Jack who was walking with Clint. I got completely soaked in the downpour. Up to this point, I had managed to keep my only pair of tennis shoes dry but now that was history.
We had a lot of fun on the river and saw a lot of places that have extreme needs. It magnified our desire to get an airplane as quickly as possible to start reaching the people even further up the river. Please keep these people and our mission in your prayers.
We were able to get home Thursday morning on the bus with no problems.
Thank you to all the family who called us while we were in town.
Lots of love
Marilyn