|
Newsletters
Jun 2010 |
Newsletters - Feb 2003Alongside Ministries en Nicaragua Dear Friends, Well, our new year is starting off with a bang! It literally did! We spent the holiday with friends in Granada and had a wonderful, memorable time. New Year’s Eve in Nicaragua is quite an event. We have never heard so many and such loud continuous firecrackers and fire works ever before. It seems the Nicaraguans prefer loud over showy because the great majority of “fireworks” are huge bottle rockets and things that look like giant sticks of dynamite that don’t do much except make a tremendous bang!
Well, this is just the beginning. Now that the first camp has been such a success we are looking forward to inviting our baseball and feeding program children to the camp. One of the reasons we’ve involved ourselves in baseball is to get to know the children and to develop trust with their parents so that we can invite them to activities like camp or VBS. What we will always need are people to help us run the camp – head up different activities, involve themselves with the campers and to help supervise. This is the perfect opportunity for a small group mission’s project. Let us know if you’ve got a group that would like an experience like this. It is great fun and you will give as well as receive a great blessing! Serving Together, Thank you for supporting our ministry in Nicaragua. Eastside Development |
Our family has had an additional member this past month. Jason Porter stayed with us for about a month to experience what the “missionary life” is really like and to get a personal taste of ministry in Nicaragua. He was involved with work at the ministry center site, with baseball, Campo Alegria, a little school in Chiquilistagua, as well as being immersed in the culture when he stayed at an orphanage, Hogar de Fe, for a few days. He heads home with many new experiences, thoughts, sites and memories to think on. We think he’s returning home a richer person for his experiences. Here are some before and after pictures of the little school in Chiquilistagua. We gave it a little face lift to prepare for the start of school again next month.
Another exciting event started this past month, too. We (I mean that in a very inclusive way) had our first camp experience with real Nicaraguan campers! Peter Willard, the director of Campo Alegria came down on January 5th to pull together all the loose ends so that we could run a 3-day camp on January 15th through the 17th. The donation of sheets, towels and pillows that we brought down on the container are being put to good use – just as we had hoped. Britton and Brookes helped out as counselors (they’re getting lots of Spanish practice!!!), Halle was the camp activities director and Kathy helped with cooking and led worship/sing-along time (in Spanish!!). We had 25 children along with about 4 Nica moms, a police officer and a social worker attend this camp. For 3 days they played on the beach and in the water, they played games, made crafts, laughed, sang, heard the story of Jesus and received a lot of love given in His name. We feel so privileged to have been a part of this time of “seed planting.” Please continue to pray with us for these children, that some of the words they heard and the message that they received will stick with them to make a positive change in their lives in the future!