Nicaragua: The Adventure Begins

Arriving in Nicaragua the intense heat slapped my face as I exited the airplane. “Wow Lord, this isn’t where I am going to be spending the next three weeks is it? It is lush and green and pretty, but honestly who can notice that when faced with this heat! Are you sure I didn’t fly too far and somehow end up in hell?”

The smiling face of the conference coordinator soon loomed in front of me. Grabbing my heavy suitcases we were off heading to the hotel some 20 minutes away.

Somehow, the hotel management had lost the list of room mates for the Share Him group that would be arriving the next morning.

So Marlon, the night worker, and I worked on the combination of who could room with whom. The rule had been, that the hotel would not allow more than 3 people in a room and they preferred only 2. Their motivation of course was that for each person over 2 people in a room, they could only charge 10 dollars a night per person and they wanted to make as much money as possible. Well, thank the Lord, we were able to put up to 5 people in a room (as the rooms were huge) and save some money for other needs in the country. Marlon was exceedingly patient and such a kind man to work with. Some 2 hours later, the account was settled, the rooms decided upon, and meal times arranged.

The next day the group began arriving till the small hotel was filled with 59 teens, young adults, and young-at-heart evangelists from the USA.

Nicaraguan people are warm and friendly and it seems that the weather tried to also be warm and friendly. The first full day they were in Nicaragua the heat was unbelievable. Orientation was held in a church whose ceiling fans didn’t always work, in weather that felt like 115 degrees and the humidity seemed like 90%. Oh well, at least everyone was properly introduced to hot weather. It’s as if God said “get used to this weather..from here on it can’t get any worse.”

The ten students from Southern went down to Chinandega, a city some 2 hours from where we were in Managua. (Here are just a few of them with their mentor Kenny.)

These Southern students were hard workers! Their smiles lit up their churches!












Some people may be able to fool adults but kids know when they are loved!

















Night after night, they preached their hearts out!













Their genuine love for the Lord just shone from their faces!












Southern, we'll take students like this any day! They are responsible, serious, genuine, but also know how to have a great time! (To all you guys, you were awesome!)

The teens in the group in Managua were younger than they had ever been before. I had seen God use 14-20 year olds in the Dominican Republic, so why couldn’t he use even younger kids? As a result, over half in this group were under the age of 16, including 3 kids who were 12 and one who was 10 years old. Each team consisted of two kids and most had an adult with them. Eighty percent of these participants had never preached before and most had not ever been outside the USA or Canada.

The computer programs were new to them and the learning curve steep. We hunkered down in the main guy’s room (which had 5 beds and a great air conditioner) and began work understanding the sermons, editing them, learning how to use Sermon Synchronizer (a program whereby what you see on your computer screen is in English and what comes out of the projector is in Spanish) etc.

These kids would hit the road running with three sermons between Friday night and Sabbath night.

For the next 16 days there would be no break..as there were meetings every night. Most of the adults in the group came as mentors and helpers not as speakers, so it was up to the kids to understand their computer equipment, practice their sermons, greet the people, and take care of their own logistics at their sites.

However, I have discovered that when you treat kids like you trust them, and give them the privilege of working with God they will rarely disappoint you. I never had to make sure the kids were practicing their sermons.

We worked in groups for 5-6 hours a day on their sermons, in addition to a daily worship and prayer session. The stamina and the seriousness with which there kids faced their work every day was heart warming.

The group began to meld into a cohesive group and one could often see little knots of tosseled haired kids praying in a group for people coming to their meetings, praying that God would use them and would make them empty vessels so that they could be filled up by the presence of God, or asking God to help them make the truths clear that night.

The kid’s attitude was great. When one kid said “Wow we get rice and beans today and I like it! Another kid said “Good thing you like it…I do too! I bet tomorrow we will get some variety and eat beans with rice and that will be good too!”.

I actually had to insist at times that kids take a break and go swimming in the pool or just do something fun or some would practice their sermons 10 times a day. When computers crashed, or the electricity went off, the kids kept on preaching from paper notes and they came in more pumped than ever saying things like, “well there must have really been people at my site that needed to hear about the Lord tonight! The devil was mad as hops but God will win this one too!” Shy kids were heard saying “I can’t believe it but when I got upfront to preach all my fear just left me. I love it! I don’t have to wait till I’m 18 or 30 God can use me and I am only 12 (or 15, or 17) !”

(If you have a projector or laptop that you would let a teen borrow to do evangelism, just email me. Your equipment can be winning souls for Jesus!)