In March, I was able to be part of a vision team from Jackson Baptist Church (NJ) that visited Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The purpose of the trip was to spend time with the missionaries there – Erick Sanchez and Ambrocio Cordova in Honduras, Nelson Juarez in El Salvador and Rigoberto Reyes in Nicaragua. The team, affectionately named “The Jackson Four” and the rest of us were blessed beyond words by the ministries of these servants for sure!
One of the locations we visited in Nicaragua was a small community called Los Huérfanos, just outside of Masaya. We were greeted by Pastor Jairo Murillo and a small group of folks that have been worshipping in one of the homes. Most of the current members of the church were from one family – a family that Pastor Jairo had visited often to encourage them and develop church leaders. Our visit was not long as we had a full agenda with Rigoberto Reyes who had many ministries he wanted the vision team to experience. We prayed with the family and were on the road again. I could not help but notice a tension in Pastor Jairo’s typically gregarious demeanor and in retrospect, overall, even the family members seemed heavy hearted but I just could not put my finger on the source.
This past July, Lee Ann and I were blessed to return to Los Huérfanos with a team from Highway Community Church (CA) to build a sanctuary for this rural community. Immediately upon arrival, there was an obvious buzz of anticipation for our arrival, but one thing I definitely noticed was that Pastor Jairo was back to his normal self – fill of life and vigor! And, the community, which as I said before was made up mostly of a very large family was also exuding the same enthusiasm…the difference between then and our trip in March was markedly different and was very cool to witness!
I was asked on Day One if we could finish the building in the short time we would be there and I was skeptical – the building lot was on a hill which required extra time and effort, but I was wrong! On our last day, after pouring enough floor to hold everyone and enough roofing to cover everyone, we worshipped together. Pastor Jairo preached a message about his calling to raise a church community in the area that was marked as closed to Evangelicals. He recalled the many times he visited this community and how the families rallied around his efforts. We found out that most of the Matus family (the family whose patriarch donated the land for the sanctuary) had recently accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior… and that during our visit in march, most of them were in the process of surrendering their former selves in service to God. We were present for the before and after shots of a spiritual war – and in the case of Los Huérfanos, GOD WON!!!!
One of the “invisible” ministries that touched my heart was in the kitchen, where Claudia Reyes and the many sisters in Christ would work non-stop to ensure everyone who came to work on the site was properly fed – and man did we eat week that week! But what was more sweet was captured in a photo just before we all departed the last day – the women gathered together to pray for how God provided for all and how He will provide in the future!
From the children to the women who invisibly served in the kitchen to the men that worked well into the nights after we left the work site, we saw how God had transformed this village. Through the project we shared testimonies and one by one, the father and sons of the Matus family told their stories of how had changed their lives – it was dramatic how in such a short time, just about the entire community accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and they were busy doing His work – PRAISE GOD!!!
Rick Myers