Doug and Julie Effinger in Nicaragua

Probably the most challenging and rewarding part of the past summer concerned our mom. We decided to bring her back home to Vancouver from Alabama, where she was living with her companion and his family. It was a decision we had hoped to avoid but in the end became an easy decision for my brother and I. The reason: mom's dementia/Alzheimers had gotten to the point that neither her companion nor his family was able to provide her adequate care. When they began discussing placing her in a care facility in in Alabama, we took the initiative to bring her home where she would be near family. She still recognizes her children and grandchildren. At the Atlanta airport bring mom home. We brought mom back shortly after 4th of July. The trip back was uneventful (she was well sedated). We were able to find a nice care home with limited number of residents where she is placed. She seems to enjoy it there. Throughout the summer I tried to visit 2-3 times a week. Once she got settled in w...

We made it back to Nicaragua after 4 months in the the states, mostly in our Vancouver home with our daughter's family. This was the longest extended stay in States since moving to Nicaragua in 2002. Blame the grand kids. Blame conferences. Blame family issues. Doesn't matter,  it was one of the best summers we have had in years. PDX famous carpet. I'm going to break our debrief up into a few different stories to avoid a long post. Suffice it to say, this was a busy summer. I attended two conferences related to our mission activities. We moved my mom, who has dementia, back to Vancouver, where we (her children) can visit her and assist her when needed. We provided daycare to our grandson throughout his summer vacation, which proves to be more enjoyable year after year. Waiting in the Houston's Goerge Bush airport has become a semi annual routine for us. Summer trips home also provide opportunities to go camping, visit other family members, reconnect wit...

I started writing this blog addition on June 5th, the day of our 34th wedding anniversary. What I began to write was that we were not together for our anniversary but I have never felt closer to her than today. After nearly three and a half decades being together, experiencing ups and downs, going through nearly marriage ending trials and coming through without calling it quits, we decided that it was time for an experiment. Actually, we didn't decide. Our daughter did. Here's what I started writing a few weeks ago...   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Experiment is coming to an end. Today officially marks Julie and my 34th anniversary and we are not together to enjoy it. But I can tell you I have never felt closer to her than I do today. She is a woman worthy of so much more than what I have given to her over the last 3 and a half decades. Yet, she chose me and ...

In our ministry, Nica Impact, we are much more than just a program for assisting young adults in their careers. We have expanded our focus to include other educational avenues. One way we do this is through a partnership with the William Minor Foundation. In this partnership have built a local library that we manage where we have books and computer access available to local students to support their studies. All the funding for the library comes from the foundation while Nica Impact manages it. It has proven to be an amazing resource to local young people, especially those from the poorer segments of society. We also have developed a relationship with the US Embassy where they provide daily English classes for teenagers sponsored by the Embassy program called Access English. This program provides scholarships to poorer students so that they can participate in a two year intensive English course. It is an amazing program and we are honored to host one of the classes in our library. ...

Casa Juan Marcos was our attempt to help students aging out from orphanages. We began with 3 young men from orpha #2 and one young man from orpha #1. We provided a rented home, a cook, a staff member as house leader, and food and educational expenses. It seemed to us to be a good program, but what we found was that the young adults from the orphanages did not like the discipline we were expecting from them. We required that they get good grades, communicate with the house leader, go to school daily, and do their chores and such. The four boys that we had lasted just over a year before one by one, they decided they would prefer to not be under our expectations for success that we had. A year after we opened the boys home, we opened one for girls. We rented a house, hired staff, and outfitted the home for four girls from the first two orphanages. When it was time for them to come, three decided not to participate, and the fourth came for two days, filled two backpacks with items from t...

When we arrived at the orphanage for our permanent mission, the first thing we noticed was our house. It was not finished. It was supposed to be finished but it was not. It was missing a lot of things. Doors, windows, a floor, and a ceiling. Over the next 6 months Julie and I completed the house that should have been completed before our arrival. We were disappointed but at the same time we were happy to be near the children. We moved into a small office space as a temporary sleeping quarters until I could get the house far enough along to move in. We also helped to facilitate some mission teams that came because of our permanent roles there. It didn’t take long before we began to realize that although the children loved having us there, many of the staff were suspicious of us. We started to feel tension. Maybe it was cultural, but over a very short period we found ourselves on the outside of staff meetings and ministry discussions. We were never sure why, but noticed that there were...

It was February of 2000 when our plane touched down in Managua, Nicaragua. We were a small group of 7. When we got off the plane we were greeted by 95 degree heat and 95% relative humidity. There was no jetway at the airport in those days. We walked down the portable stairs and were guided into an old, dank, light blue painted building with no air conditioning by two rows of military police all carrying AK-47 military rifles. It was somewhat intimidating. After passing through immigration and customs, we were picked up by two old pick up trucks driven by orphanage staff. Off we went on the 30 kilometer trip to our destination. I remember as we passed through the customs area, there was a wall of glass where families would pick up their loved ones. Faces would be pressed against the glass as literally a hundred or so people were squishing in trying to find their family member as they exited the customs agent. It was quite the first impression. While riding in the back of a pickup truc...