Hello, this is Dania and Marion writing from Esteli, Nicaragua. We are here to give you an update of our experience. Today was the first day of our community action project, the community we are working with is called La Garnacha and it is about an hour away from Esteli. The community asked us to help build a baseball field and also to fix their church. We divided into two groups: half the group helped on the baseball field and the other half helped fix the church. The leader in charge of the baseball field was Dania and the leader in charge of the church was Marion. The community wanted us to remodel their place of prayer, and they were excited that their church was going to be fixed after so many years. What my peers and I learned today is that we have to communicate more and include everyone in the group. We were all motivated and excited to start this project, and indeed we finished before the planned time. What surprised me the most today is that we all wanted it to look the best and we were really focused on what had to be done and also on how the community wanted the work done. I am so proud of my group because we were positive and we worked together as a team without any arguments. The most inspiring person I met today was the woman that was working with us, because she was so helpful and nice. And even though we were the ones that had to do the work, she wanted to make sure she was included. She kept saying thank you and she seemed like a great person. What I learned about myself (Marion) today was that I am actually pretty shy and I don’t speak up that much so it was hard for people to hear my voice. (M.M)

As leader of the baseball group I was in charge of all the equipment we bought for the baseball field and making sure that everyone was included while building the fence and fixing the field. Today my peers and I learned that we need to put our differences aside and work together to help the people in the community because we came to support them and their needs meaning that there was no room to be selfish. A big problem in our group was that people were stuck on the fact that the things the community asked us for were not necessarily something that they needed, just something that they wanted. What surprised all of us today, and also made us change our minds, was seeing how the community was working together, never complaining about the heat, materials or tiny cuts. The most inspiring person we saw today was a guy from the community who we saw was working so hard, he was tinier than most of the men there but he never let anything stop him not even when he cut the side of his face open. Personally he reminded me of my daddy, he even smelled like him(: What I learned about myself today was that I definitely do NOT like taking orders from people that I don’t know but that I can always find ways to move forward and not let simple issues ruin my experience as a leader (D.I.L.).

For both of us, leader of the day started off as a struggle but ended as an inspiring experience. This was a great life experience for us because we realized that being in charge of a group of people who have different personalities and priorities can be difficult. This made us think of our own leaders and how hard they work to keep us happy and united. We ended the day celebrating our coordinator’s birthday by throwing a surprise party. We are thankful for this experience as Leaders of the day but we are also glad it is over. And to our parents we love you and we’ll be home soon <3