Cohort of Missioners in Nicaragua : Caminantes en la Misión
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| There is a time for everything, and everything changes with time. Since the last time I wrote, many things have changed.
I have now been in Nicaragua for over half a year. My fellow Caminantes
and I seem to have found our place in the Nehemiah Center. Many of the IMPACT Clubs have started, and we are all acting as leaders in these special youth groups. My brother graduated from
university, and I was able to be a part of the celebration in Iowa. I
planned and participated in a visit from a peer organization called
Communities First Association. Sickness attacked with a vengeance during the month of May, and I've learned some difficult lessons about balance and rest. I moved out
of my host family's house and into a place for communal living with the
other Caminantes. For the first time in my life, I have my own house!
We have had several short-term visitors, and we facilitated their time
in León. I had a birthday. I also decided to accept an offer to continue
working with the Nehemiah Center long-term. Lots has happened! Through
it all, God has remained faithful, and I'm grateful that wherever I go
and whatever I do, He remains the same.
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Mi Casa es Su Casa
As the Caminantes in Nicaragua, we have been praying, planning, and
searching for a house for several months now. Mark, Guissell, and I
started thinking about it because we wanted a place of our own where we
could invite all sorts of people all the time. People from the
community, our friends, our colleagues, etc. We dreamed of having a
place where participants in the Caminante program would live, eat, pray,
and play together. As our work became more diversified, we saw a common
house as a way to bring us together again. After looking for houses to
rent, we heard of one close to the baseball stadium with many
rooms and bathrooms at an affordable price. From our first visit to the
signed contract, we delayed a month. It seems that this house was God's
gift to us because the landlady really wanted us to live there, and she
waited for us to agree. Since Guissell and I moved in the first week of
June, we have already hosted a short-term team for 24 hours, invited
people to dinner, acted as a hostel for traveling friends, and held
Nehemiah Center meetings at our place. Our Nicaraguan friends have
pitched in to loan us everything from a fridge to a stove to beds to
dishes. It's a beautiful display of the generosity among the Body of
Christ, and we hope it continues to be a place that points to the
Kingdom of God. That said, you are welcome to visit! We have room for
you.
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Please and Thank You
-- I got sick with the stomach flu and
various colds in the last month, but I'm thankful that the Lord gave me
rest in those times. I'm also thankful for health now
--Praise God for my 26 years of life! And thanks to all who made the day special and helped me feel celebrated
-- I'm thankful for a new place to live as well as continued relations with my old family
--Thank God for direction by confirming my decision to stay in Nicaragua and continue to do what is placed before me
--Rejoice with me about a refreshing week at a Servant Partners
training, with a mini-retreat, group Bible studies, and intercessory
prayer with o
--Ask God for discernment so that I can balance my life and make healthy choices regarding work and rest
-- Ask the Lord to provide for my financial, emotional, and spiritual
needs as a partner missionary. I need to raise more funds for a longer
period of time. I plan to return to North America from August 30 to September 30, and I hope to have most of my budget raised in that time as well as reconnect with people.
-- Ask the Spirit to give us harmony in our new home and help us work
together as the Caminantes to describe what our program is and how it
should be run in the future
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You're Doing What Now?
Towards the end of May, I received an email from Nehemiah Center staff
offering me a long-term position. It will be a bit different from the
work I have been doing in the community development program, but it
encompasses a lot of the partnership roles I have taken on. The most
exciting thing is that I will be a member of the Nehemiah Center's Ezra Team and
get to work with local pastors a lot. My official title is
Intercultural Facilitator, and I will act as a bridge between Nicaragua
and the rest of the world. A lot of the partnership focus is on North
America, but we have connections to other Latin American countries as
well as Romania with IMPACT Clubs. Some of my duties will include
working with the Ezra Team to develop volunteer opportunities, figuring
out how all volunteers leave the Nehemiah Center with the same basic
ideas, maintaining and expanding church partnerships, looking into and
pushing for more Nicaraguan missionaries to go abroad, overseeing and
contextualizing the IMPACT program, and encouraging discussions about
city vision among pastors and leaders. Some examples of these tasks
would be helping university students find internships, translating
emails between Nicaragua and Canada, keeping track of how many
IMPACT Clubs Nicaragua has and what the leaders need, or calling local
pastors to meetings where they pray and dream together. In other words, I
get to be a ministry matchmaker on individual, group, organizational,
city, regional, and country levels. In many ways
it seems like my dream job though I am aware of my inadequacy for the
task, forcing me to recognize the importance of prayer in everything
that I do, depending on the Lord and His strength. (Pictured above are
all of us at the Nehemiah Center who share a birthday on July 7)
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A Week in the Life
When I'm not traveling with a group or participating in some training,
my weeks have a general rhythm to them. On Mondays, I go to Managua to
the Nehemiah Center for morning devotions. It's advisable to go by car,
spend the night in Managua, or do whatever you can to avoid the bus on
Monday morning because it's always full. After devotions, we have
meetings with the Nicaraguan program coordinators (monthly) or with
Steve, our supervisor. I go out to lunch with friends or pack something
from home. In the afternoon I catch the bus back to León and go to Nuevo
Horizonte to lead an IMPACT Club. Nuevo Horizonte is a neighborhood
where I attend most of the community development activities, including
this group for young people to do community service-learning projects,
and their leadership team is pictured above. Tuesdays are usually
planning days with Roberto. We map the week and divide up tasks.
Sometimes we have an afternoon meeting in a community where we work.
Wednesdays I have been trying to make as quieter days. Usually I have
extended morning devotions, clean or do laundry, catch up on paperwork,
and visit friends and acquaintances in León. In the evening I go to pick
up Guissell from the community where she leads an IMPACT Club.
Thursdays are often full days of meetings or trainings with Roberto, or
we work on reports together. In the evening I go to church at Promesa.
Fridays are also days for training, meetings, and paperwork. I work on
translation projects, interviews, writing policies for the Caminantes,
etc. Sometimes we have people over for dinner on Friday or Saturday
nights. Saturdays are days to catch up, finish projects, clean the
house, and have special meetings. Occasionally I go with a projector to a
church to show a movie or a slide show at the request of a church
member. Sometimes I plan for the next week's IMPACT Club meeting.
Sundays, I go to church in the morning and spend the rest of the day
with people or resting in my house. This gives a picture of my daily
life although there are always exceptions to the average week's
schedule.
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Up and Coming
-- Conversations with the Nehemiah Center and Christian Reformed World
Missions about my transition from being a short-term volunteer to a
partner missionary for the foreseeable future. This includes a lot of
work for becoming a partner missionary as well as transitioning from one
position to another at the Nehemiah Center
-- I will participate on the committee to evaluate the Nehemiah Center
and determine the parameters for a five-year strategic plan, with
definitions laid out by October
-- Training with Roberto in each community about the five dimensions of development
-- Describing and writing a lot of the policy for the Caminantes so others can follow us
-- Partnership development as a missionary via social media and a trip to North America from August 30 to September 30 to share with c
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