The first group left Friday at 7 a.m. and headed north. Rachel, Michelle and Emma to Esteli where Rachel and Michelle will work with AMLAE, a women's organization, and Emma will work at a paper-making cooperative. Gina, Jon W, Liz and Ali G are going to Candelaria, a remote village in the Department of Boaco. Mennonite Central Committee partners with a program there called ASOFENIX to create solar powered generators. (Read about this in the May-June issue of A Common Place.) http://mcc.org/acp/2009/05_06/

Chelsea and Casey went to Matagalpa to work at a nutrition center, and Steph and Naomi are in Managua working at a school for the deaf. Elena and Jonna went to Masaya to work at an orphanage called Hogar Belen. MCC also partners with this organization. Jesse and Ashley went to Jinotega to work at Los Pipitos, a center for children with special needs. Allie K and Bethany have a service assignment with Niños del Fortín, an organization in León that helps transition children and teens from the life of scavenging on the streets and in the garbage dump to living and working in the city.

At 9 a.m. we put Kurt and Jon S in a taxi headed for the biological research station on Laguna do Apoyo. Alicia and Vanessa caught a bus for their work with AMLAE in Rivas, and Jacki and Valerie (who surprised me with a visit already today because they needed to buy scrubs) are working at a health clinic in La Concepción.

And an apology that I did not get pics of sending the last group off. We took separate taxis to the bus terminal. Unfortunately unknown to us there are two terminals in Jinotepe, and I went to one and Lisa to the other. By the time we found each other, the microbus driver was not about to wait for me to take a photo.

As soon as we begin our service visits we will post more blogs. Meanwhile we will be writing reports and orientating next year's leader, Jeanne Liechty.