As I sit here on this computer and I am going through websites like foxnews.com and cnn.com.  It is really hard to not get sad at looking at how bad some people have it.  With everything going on with our country like our current war and how bad the economy is getting.  It is really hard to not worry about am I going to be able to get a job or for some people am I going to be able to keep my job.  Or am I going to be able to keep the lifestyle I live.  Or whatever we all have our own worries.  When I am looking at all these stories of how people got there houses forclosed on, and now they are  living in a tent and it looks like they are going to be homeless soon.  Can you imagine living through this without God? Now I think we can all agree that we wished this recession would not of happened, and that it is going to be tough. 

   One of the churchs we attend regulary here is called Torre Fuerte which means Strong Tower. It is a ministry I am not really involved in but their story is still touching.  Every Saturday around 3 in the afternoon, over a hundred children come to the El Puente compound.  They come because they have to to recieve a feeding program ticket.  Because without the ticket they can not recieve food.  Now this feeding program that used to happen three times in a week now only happens two times in a week.  It only happen two times in a week now because funding from their sister church in the United States has slowed down.  For some of these kids these are the only meals they recieve in a week.  

   But for most they do recieve other meals but it for sure will not be three meals a day.  In our ESL class we have this student whose name is Josè.  One day he came into class really sweaty and hot, and I asked him why and he told me that he had to go to Masaya which is like 14 miles away to see his friend he wanted to have money to come to ESL class and he would not have had money if he would have taken the bus.  Keep in mind our ESL class cost 5 corodobas a class which is about 25 cents.

   In the El Puente compound the back cement wall of the facility is pretty much in the Barrio.  Well we have this group of woman whom over time we come to get to know them pretty well.  Now I want to describe these houses to you.  All of them have dirt floors.  Which actually brings me to an interesting little face, and that is even though a good amount of floors are made of dirt here, people continue to clean.  Women will be in there house sweeping there dirt floors to get the dirt floors.  But interestling enough it actually does help.  Because they also throuh some water down on the dirt to keep the dust down.  But anyways  the floors are made of dirt the walls made out of wood, and the ceilings are made of tin.  When I say that the walls are made out of wood I mean that it litterally looks like they cut a tree down and cut the wood into slices then nailed them up.  There are now pretty 4x2.  Now you can imagine that in 90* weather it gets pretty hot in these houses.  Yet they never complain.  One of the women name Marta has four children, and her husband lives in Miami working for them and sending back money to them.  That is when he can afford to send money back, for the economy is affecting him to. 

   I felt that the Lord has been pressing these issues on my heart, and that He wants all of you to know that you can be just as happy in the worst of times as you were in the happiest of times.  Because when you look at it from all of these peoples perspectives they are all happy yet they nothing in compartive to what most Americans have.  The Lord loves to test our faith in the worst of times.  So lets use this time to grow together in the name of the Lord.