In the small Nicaraguan village of Messiah, where poverty and the infallibility of the human spirit meet head on, Terrence Flood's life changed forever.
For the last year Flood, a Queens native and owner of the Flood Insurance Group in Flushing, has been traveling to the South American country to help build homes for impoverished families, many of whom have little more than makeshift huts made of scrap tin and plastic to call home."Some of the people down there, when they get up in the morning have to ask themselves 'will I have enough money to feed my family?'" Flood said. "It's extremely humbling. It makes some of the problems you have when you get back home seem insignificant."
Flood's journey began in 2003, when he attended an annual conference of the Sitkins 100, a networking vehicle for insurance agents across the country, and heard colleague Mark Rollins speak about his recent trip to Nicaragua. He spoke of the widespread poverty, lack of infrastructure and poor living conditions prevalent in the developing South American country.
Rollins' testimony stuck with Flood, and last year he signed on to take an eight day-trip to Nicaragua with Bridges to Community, a non-profit community development organization that sends volunteers to developing countries like Nicaragua to lend a hand with construction projects.
Flood vividly remembers driving to his home in Manhasset, L.I. after signing up for the trip, anxiously and excitedly questioning the decision he had just made.
"I was thinking to myself 'what the hell am I doing going to Nicaragua?' without knowing then what effect it would have on me," he said.
Flood has made two trips to the area in the last year, most recently in January. On both trips, Flood has helped build homes for families in Messiah, a small village about a 30-minute drive from the larger city of Monagua. Each time Flood and a group of several volunteers from across the United States work with Nicaraguan masons and construction workers doing manual labor like hand-mixing and spreading cement.
Flood said the trips have helped him "take the blinders off" and gain a better perspective on the world outside Queens and the United States. He said his experiences in Messiah have opened his eyes to a new world, one ripe with stories of profound joy and unsettling tragedy.
"These people are fighters, everyday they're fighting," Flood said. "They have nothing, but they're always smiling. They're as happy as can be."
Growing up in Whitestone, Flood said he never knew hardship like he has seen in Nicaragua. As a child he attended Blessed Sacrament Catholic School and then St. Mary's High School, both in Bayside. Now 42, Flood operates the insurance agency that his grandfather started with a telephone and a filing cabinet in the basement of his Bayside home more than four decades ago.
The small business quickly became part of the family legacy, passing down to Flood's father after his grandfather retired. Flood worked with his father for more than 17 years until November 2000, when his father died suddenly from a heart attack.
Flood took over the family business shortly thereafter and today it has grown by more than four times the size it was before his father's death, a fitting tribute to his parent's hard work, according to Flood.
Nothing he had learned in his more than two decades in the insurance business, however, aptly prepared him for what he experienced when he visited the village of Messiah.
In his office in Flushing, Flood's eyes welled with tears as he told the story of a young boy named Juan Ernesto. Born into squalor, Juan had a childhood not uncommon to many children in the area, Flood said, living on the street and sniffing glue from aluminum cans. One day, as he walked along the street, Juan was grabbed by a youth gang, which poured glue all over him and set him on fire.
After being rejected by his mother and burned over 90 percent of his body, Juan now lives in an orphanage, where Flood's wife, Maureen, met him on a separate trip. Together, Flood and his wife donated $1,000 to Juan to help pay for his schooling. Flood said despite his plight, Juan's spirits remain high and he aspires to finish high school and become a newspaper reporter.
Stories like Juan's are common among the people in and around Messiah, according to Flood. He said knowing the hardship of the villagers makes the experience much more powerful.
"When we go down there some of the people (in the village) ask why? Why do you come here to do this? But we end up taking more out of the experience than whatever we gave," he said.
Each time a home is finished in the village, the volunteers and villagers come together for a house dedication ceremony, which doubles as both a solemn religious ceremony and a joyous celebration with music and dancing. Flood beamed as he spoke about the most recent dedication in January.
"After the dedication the one guy we built the house for started yelling for us to 'step back, move back (from the house).' We didn't know what was going on, but he just kept asking us to move back and go further," Flood said. "Finally he told us to stop and then he pointed at the house and said "look, look at my dream."
"It's like night and day. Something we would call a tool shed is now their castle," he said. "To us it's nothing, but to them it's everything. The emotional impact of it is incredible.
Flood said he is already planning another trip with his 17-year-old son Ryan in June, and hopes to continue to work with the project in the future.
For more information on how to get involved with the Bridges to Community organization, visit their Web site at www.bridgestocommunity.org.
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 138.
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