5Crawfords

The EMI Nicaragua Office (with John, Gala, and I) Arriving into Managua early last month, if I hadn’t know any better, I’d have thought the country was just as normal and stable as I’d ever seen it. There were no outward signs at all of the political tensions that had erupted earlier in the year. We did pass a couple of pro-government rallies en route from the airport, but that was just a small group of people standing in the traffic circles waving flags and large posters of the President’s face. Fortunately, the political situation in the country isn’t for us to sort out. Instead, we were coming down to try to help the office chart the way forward given a number of challenges in the past year: the loss of three (of 6) ex-pat staff families, loss of the majority of project work due to the unrest in the country, the loss of the office director who departed in August to help his wife’s ministry in the country, some internal struggles in the office related to the challenge of wo...