Prayer Letters
Here are our prayer letters that we write every three months. If you are not on our email list and would like to receive these letters, please sign up today. Enjoy reading!
March 1, 2003
Dear Friends and Family,
Lying on the dirt road on a couple of slabs of thin wood,
he worked diligently testing new ideas to finish the job and finish it
well. Finally after about two hours in the hot sun, he looked at me and said “it’s
done.” Now, for me, came the awkward part- he was a friend doing a job
for me for which he should be paid; however it’s still hard for me to
know how much money is enough or too much. So I asked him straight out how
much it would be. In all sincerity he told me not to worry about it, that he
was doing me a favor – friend to friend. I knew that he meant it, but
just an hour before we had been talking about how rough life is in Nicaragua
mostly because there is such a huge lack of job stability. He never knows when
a new job will come around and for how long it will last. I knew that I could
not leave there without giving him something for all the time he had spent
helping me – so I paid him 100 cordobas ($7) to which he reacted by
saying it was way too much!
Having lived in Managua for almost a year, there is still so much that is hard to get used to – seeing children on the streets cleaning your windshields or selling gum when they ought to be in school, having friends who are constantly trying to find stable work, hearing all about the corruption within the school and university systems, listening to stories of friends being held up in their own neighborhoods by gangs, and the list goes on and on. So many days I ask myself “how can we make a difference in the midst of all of this struggle and hopelessness?” And the answers are not easy to come by, and if anything, I am learning that it takes a lot of patience and wisdom.
As we, Christ for the City Intl. Nicaragua, have begun a new year we have also developed some new approaches to ministry. As an organization we have decided that we do not want to be duplicating ministries but rather be a support to those that exist as well as truly seeking out where God is already working and join Him in that work. A recent highlight that has given us more confidence of working alongside other ministries was with a group of pastors with whom we were connected. They had been asking us about more pastoral and Biblical training. In the last couple of months we have become close friends with the director of INSTE, a Biblical institute that offers classes through local churches. We invited the director to come to their pastoral meeting and from that a group was formed to begin studying on a regular basis. Afterwards, the director told Alcides, my boss, that that was the first time that any other ministry had recommended the Institute as well as inviting him personally into a group of pastors with whom we were already involved.
In the last couple of months we have truly seen God working in the unity among ministries and churches as well as in the area of training. Another highlight that catches this vision was a day of leadership training done by a team with LEAMIS (Leadership in Missions) in a community eight hours outside of the capital at which there were about 80 pastors and leaders from different communities and churches in the surrounding area. There is a lot of need, struggle and hopelessness here, but we have found that the best success comes when we have our focus on what God is doing and are patient for His timing.
Seeking Him for life,
Amanda Van Deman
"dale una luz a los que aman tanto vivir en Nicaragua."
~ Guardabarranco (Nicaraguan duo)