{"id":1561,"date":"2016-08-26T19:42:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T19:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2016-08-26T19:48:52","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T19:48:52","slug":"1561","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1561","title":{"rendered":"…small patch of dirt in Nicaragua"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently did an interview for the local newspaper with our daughter Sarah, who\u00a0 went to Nicaragua with a group of Franciscan University students.\u00a0 She said the most poignant moment happened for her early on.\u00a0 The group had just gotten off the plane and were on a bus going toward an orphanage in the heart of Managua, the capital.\u00a0 It was 10 p.m.\u00a0 The bus stopped at a red light and the windows were down.\u00a0 A group of young kids were playing soccer at this hour on a small<\/em> patch of dirt in the middle of the city.\u00a0 With smiles of joy on their faces, the young kids motioned to the college students to come join them.\u00a0 Sarah, a college soccer player,<\/a> said there was an explosion of mixed emotions inside.\u00a0 Here were these kids who were tremendously joyful with their circumstances and wanted to share with these American young people.\u00a0 And here were these kids with, probably, little to eat, shacks for homes, and a small patch of dirt for a field.\u00a0 Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 Our foreign policy<\/a> spins around, well, meeting in the middle.\u00a0 That is, asking Americans to sacrifice more (high-end artificial soccer turf, high end food consumption, high end houses…), so these kids in Nicaragua (and all around the Third World for that matter) had, at the very least, more of the basics of all this stuff. Question:<\/strong> \u00a0 “But Lord, when did we see You playing on a field without grass?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently did an interview for the local newspaper with our daughter Sarah, who\u00a0 went to Nicaragua with a group of Franciscan University students.\u00a0 She said the most poignant moment happened for her early on.\u00a0 The group had just gotten …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}