Xmas Update from Ceci in Nicaragua

Hello, friends - I got a quick message from Ceci giving us all an update, that she wanted me to share.

From Ceci: "Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. We are home safely but without my son and his family. It was impossible to bring them here to the compound we are being watched so need to be extra careful. I hope you and yours had a great Christmas.

We had a good Christmas with people in the compound on the 24th. The kids got home made presents, the pastor came after lunch to lead a special Christmas service here and the kids surprised us with a small Christmas concert. Every chipped in to make a great Christmas dinner. I stuffed a small pig with stuffing that had apples and raisins home made bread crumbs with herbs from our garden. The veggies were from our gardens too.

After the festivities we managed to sneak away early to go to Managua . There were a few check points, the first ones we managed to breeze through wishing them a Merry Christmas and giving gifts of cigarettes , homemade cookies and a bottle of Coke. We do what is necessary in war...

The last one was the one that had us worried. They took the plate numbers on the car, copies of our ID'S and asked a
Lot of annoying questions. We knew then that we would be not be bringing them back to the coumpound [sic]."

image from Havana Times: https://havanatimes.org/?p=146082 ..."The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) called the 34-member countries for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis in Nicaragua for this Thursday, December 27." HT is a news source that Ceci recommended to me earlier as having decent coverage of what's going on.

Ceci continued: "While there we were able to have video chats with my sons and their families as well as my brother and his family. After we will were treated to a very large roast beef dinner with all the trimmings including my favorite Ceasar salad! We did manage a quiet Christmas service at my son's neighbor's house.

It was very odd travelling to a Managua this year, no Christmas lights or decorations. No Christmas music. No churches having services. No cheery greetings or smiles. But the grinch did not dampen our spirits!
We came home to bad news though...about ten minutes before we arrived, our eldest dog, Banshee passed away quite suddenly.
She was old and our most faithful guard dog. She will be sorely missed. We had a solemn funeral lead by the children of the compound.

I guess we will be having another funeral this morning for Frisky the cat. I really hope and pray that things will settled down in the new year. But I really don't think so. We listened in on the Christmas address of the madame comrade's speech where she assured everyone that she will be the next president of this country. Does not bode well..."

image from nydailynews dot com

Ceci continued (after I asked if there was anything else she'd like to share): "Just let them know that Russian and Chinese money flows freely. Cartels are laundering lots of money too. The new year promises more problems. They are nationalizing all gas stations which should see higher prices. As more sanctions are applied, the more the population suffers."

Continue to send your good wishes to the people of Nicaragua, and hope that that meeting HT reported on does something useful tomorrow, instead of making things worse. We love you, Ceci! <3