A few days ago, the mail brought a beautifully illustrated, 64-page brochure about worldwide vacation destinations. Much of it focused on luxury cruise ships and fun in the sun. With winter still definitely outside my door, and the task of snow shoveling getting more and more wearisome, it sure would be nice to be on a beautiful sandy beach and forget all of the normal concerns.

While many people were enjoying those pleasures, I also experienced temperatures in the high 80’s — but in a different way. I was helping in Bluefields, Nicaragua with a church group from Illinois for week in February. It was nice to wear shorts and t-shirts, but we were doing more than just getting suntans. Our main project was helping missionary friends in that Atlantic coastal town of 50,000 people construct a dormitory.

Many people in Bluefields are of African ancestry and speak English, so they often can get jobs on the kind of tour ships shown in brochures. Given the very high unemployment rate (over 2/3 of the folks in Bluefields don’t have steady work), that’s very enticing. However, it often means that they have to leave their children and youth in the care of someone else for six months. Even when parents don’t have to leave, there often are very serious problems within families that require foster care for long periods of time—hence the need for the dormitory.

Our worksite was at the edge of town. The closest road ended about a half-mile away, and all of the construction equipment and supplies (including rocks, concrete blocks, cement, and steel reinforcing rods) had to be carried by hand or on the backs of small horses. The water comes from a well, but it’s already contaminated when brought up by hand in buckets. I was glad to be able to bring a portable water purification system from New Life International (listed in this directory) that uses common salt and is powered by an ordinary car battery to purify up to 10,000 gallons of water daily. I also brought a lot of Christian literature for children that I got at no charge from another organization in this directory, Christian Resources International.

Although this was not a medical mission trip, I was able to visit the local hospital in Bluefields (the only one for an area about the size of West Virginia or South Carolina). Its building has a beautiful appearance, but it lacks so many of the kinds of equipment and supplies that one takes for granted in developed countries.

On my way back, I had a change of planes and a four hour-layover in Memphis. That made it possible to meet with a representative of another organization listed in this directory, Engineering World Health, and talk about possibly getting some medical supplies for Bluefields. It would be even greater if one or two university biomedical engineering students they mentor could go there next year for a summer outreach and help repair medical equipment and teach more effective use thereof. They’ve done that in other places in Nicaragua (which is second only to Haiti as being the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere). Many of the people I met on the plane between Houston and Managua were also involved in some kind of a mission trip, and I was glad to learn about their activities and share my directory.

This is not the kind of vacation advertised in the Sunday newspaper or given as prizes on the television game shows. They don’t show the tiny houses built of scrap material, clothes drying on a barbed wire fence, chickens and goats running around nearby, and children without anything on their feet walking on ground contaminated by animal waste. Many places have conditions far worse that what I saw. Yet which kind of travel experience does the most good, leaves you with a sense of accomplishment afterward, and hopefully inspires you with a new list of goals?

Maybe your circumstances won’t not allow you to go on a mission trip, and don’t feel guilty if that’s the case. There are plenty of other ways to help. Either way, I hope that this directory gives you some useful ideas, and I welcome your comments and suggestions.

H. Bruce Carr