CHE ministry, Ometepe 2012

The old FIEMCA church, El Congo, Ometepe

Interior of the old church

Our first stop in El Congo was at this lovely, little church.

You will see the new one, next door, later, but this is where we were welcomed to the community by the Community Health Evangelism women,  their pastor, Edin, and his wife, Juanita.
Juanita is the Regional Leader for Women of CHE on Ometepe island.  She heads a team of 10 community leaders.  Edin rides his bike many kilometers a week to pastor the people of El Congo.  While we went about our activities, he cared for the people who came, calling various people over to pray for a boy who accepted Christ one morning, and 2 women who reconciled with Jesus one afternoon.

Pastor Edin and Pastora Juanita

We go to Nicaragua under the leadership of the Nicaragua National CHE Team; we offer activities, planned with them, in support of their ministry in communities. Darling's work with Women of CHE, Ometepe, is funded by Samaritan's Purse, Canada.  We brought  sewing and baking projects, Fatima taught jewelry-making, as well as helping Kelly and Darling with baking.  Tania and Darling also led devotionals.

                                                          


We all stayed in nearby houses, Bill and I stayed with Marta, right next to the church, and all of the classes: jewelry, sewing, and baking were held in her patio, as Nicaraguans call the part of their property that immediately surrounds the house.  Everyone ate all our delicious meals there, too.  Brother Antonio gave spiritual leadership, and his wife, Mirna, an accomplished seamstress, worked with Heide on the sewing project.
                                                            

Marta is keeping an eye on her grandchildren
 while doing embroidery with me

The best thing about these last 2 trips has
been being part of an integrated team.
Below, Fatima, Tania, Anne, and Kelly enjoy
dangling their feet in the water, each other's company,
and the Lord's exquisite creation.

                                                      Marta suggested we all go down to the dock, a few hundred yards away, to    watch the sunset.  We watched a magical sunset turn the cap of cloud over the volcano a rosy pink, and listened to the Congo monkeys passing on their nightly patrol through the enormous mango trees hanging over the edge of the lake.  They make an echoing, roaring sound that I would never have connected with monkeys.  Marta led us into the twilight under the mangoes to watch a mother and baby.                    


   

Don Chico, San Buenaventura, Boaco

Cacao fruit, growing amongst the coffee bushes - it's almost ready to pick

Don Chico in his coffee beneficio

Cacao fruit - inside are white pods, like lima beans, covered with a sweet syrup (delicious to suck!), which contain the makings of a chocolate bar

Don Chico on his reforested hillside.  He says, "When I stand here, I am looking at the future".

Francisco Aguilar Guido  (Don Chico)

Don Chico is a CHE leader, community leader, coffee cooperative leader, coffee farmer, husband to Dona Lidia, and father of 8.  Only one child remains in high school; almost all the others are in some form of higher education.  Don Chico’s sons who work on the farm with him enable him to take the time necessary for his CHE work.   He lives in San Buenaventura

San Buenaventura is 14 kilometers from Boaco, in the central part of the country.  It has a population of 1200.

It is a farming community where people keep cattle, grow coffee, or basic grains, such as corn and beans.

I’ve lived here for 19 years, and when I came I had very little experience with different crops.  My parents only taught me to cut corn.  I trained with various organizations and projects so now I have a few cattle, grow organic coffee, and I work on the reforestation of my land planting a total of 1800 trees that are highly valued for wood.  I have cerro real, pochote, and teca, amongst others.

Natural reforestation is very important, too.  We take care of the trees that sprout in the woods.   I have 4,000 small trees that are growing naturally here.  

The climate has improved since the trees have grown, and Also the animals have come back - before there were no animals to hunt.  You see and hear the monkeys, and sloths.   These improvements help us take care of the family - there are 10 of us.  Helps us keep the children in school: 7 of the 8 are studying.  My children are working on the farm, fishing, studying medicine (1 son has 1 more year in medical school in Cuba), studying engineering, studying English to be a translator, studying law.

In CHE I work with the communities, and the neighbours.

From the spiritual point of view, I have seen changed lives.  Other projects only deal with the material, the physical - CHE brings the spiritual.

In San Buenaventura we work a lot with the families, people are converted to Christ.

I’ve learned about preventive health work, I led the project to get running water to our community. Now we are working on getting latrines for the 60 families here who don’t have them.  We are submitting a proposal to the regional government of Boaco asking for latrines.

Another 15 houses need electricity.

CHE helps us organize ourselves to work together.  For example, in El Capitan (a small community, 7 km up the mountain) they’ve made a 6 km road.

CHE groups have aquaducts for water, bringing water by gravity to more than 50 families; 15 beneficios (processing buildings) for small producers of coffee.  These beneficios enable the farmers to ferment and wash the beans in hygienic conditions, which improves the quality of the coffee.  Then, of course, they can get a better price.

Our coffee cooperative is working in 15 communities.  The members understand the importance of crop diversification, the importance of having fruit trees for the family, so that the children are eating fruit instead of junk food.  They can drink fruit drinks, instead of soda.  The members learn about farm administration in the co-op

They learn a lot through the co-op and through CHE.

Another great thing in our area is El Banco de Tierra (Land Bank), and working with David and Wendy vanKlinken.  There are many farmers who are almost out of debt, thanks to the Land Bank.

The neighbours notice the changes for the better.

And, for a year now, thanks to friends of David and Wendy,  

we have the little pharmacy right at my house.  They gave us $1000 for construction, later after we went over the accounts with them, they gave us $2000 to stock it with medicines.  The Ministry of Health partnered in this venture.  This pharmacy does not exist to make money, but to serve.  It has been a great blessing - it’s right here in the community, and it is cheaper than other pharmacies.

The people see what CHE does, so then they want to be involved.

We’ve also got families and individuals involved in repujado (decorative metal work) which they have sold in Managua, as well as to Nicamade.  (Don Chico’s son is a talented artist).  The women are doing crocheted  bags.

Another thing is carpentry workshops.

Esneyda's Story

Esneyda at her sewing machine

Esneyda is a CHE community leader, in Balgue, Ometepe island, Nicaragua. This is her story of how she became involved in CHE, as she told it to us.
It will be good to hear the updates in a couple of weeks when we are in Balgue again.

Esneyda Morales

Vice-president of the church Women’s Group, and of CHE in Balgue.

Aged 33, married, with 2 children.

It all started with an invitation to church.

Then I was chosen to go to a training in another community.  Pastor Cecilio and I went.  Then at the next training we learned to make ear-rings.  This sewig class to make bags is the third training I have had.

I like CHE - it helps people.  It attracts people who like to learn, and motivates them. A lot of women don’t work, and they don’t have any skills.  Their day-to-day work is boring.  So the CHE classes give them new opportunities.

I work as a dressmaker, and I have my clientele - that’s important.

I came to know Jesus in Sunday School, when I was 12 years old.  My father is a pastor.  

We have our own house, but we rent it out, and live here with my parents to help them.  Otherwise, they’d be on their own here.

Balgue is not very developed.  There are 4 small hotels.  people like the work that comes along with the tourism, for example, in the hotels.  There is a secondary school, a primary school.  There is a project, Hand of Friendship, and my mother is the community coordinator.  There is money from the UK and Germany to teach women to cook things, like bread, that they can sell.

God always helps me, blesses me.  My vision, or what I am most interested in, is that women learn so that they can get ahead in life - that they become friends of the gospel, and are converted.

The following photo shows Esneyda, and another CHE worker, with the draw string bags that are made by girls at Cheltenham High School, Pa.  They contain sewing kits for the women to use to make the bags in the class.  The girls also include messages, and many of the women send notes back to the girls.  

Fatima's story - photo below

Fatima del Carmen Medina
Regional CHE leader.

Aged 29. Married, with 3 children: Guidman, 13, Wilmington, 7, Abery, 3.
Lives in El Limonal, Chinandega

I began working with CHE in 2001 through the Nehemiah Center, in Managua (www.nehemiahcenter.org). We formed a CHE committee in El Limonal, and trained other women in preventive health care, promoting good health, and the abundant life in Jesus.

Everything I have learned in CHE has helped me so much.
I have learned to connect with many people, both foreigners, and nationals. I have been to other communities to share what I have learned. I feel very happy when I see women who have learned at my trainings.

Antonio Vivas, Roger Pavon and his family, and Leana Duarte at the Meso America Regional CHE Conference in Guatemala, July 2011

Introduction to Darling Lopez, Women of CHE Facilitator, Nicaragua

Darling and Kelly Diaz in folk dancing costume

I worked with closely with Darling during the 3 years I spent in Nicaragua as a Food for the Hungry Hunger Corps worker.  It was a great blessing to learn under her leadership, and I treasure her friendship.  We attended the first Women of CHE conference in San Jose with Charlene McWilliam (of LifeWind, who created the first Women of CHE classes).  We were both part of the first Women of CHE  National Gathering, in Nicaragua, along with Hermano (brother) Antonio Vivas, and Roger Pavon, held in Boaco, Nicaragua.  In September, 2011, we will be attending the first Women of CHE conference for all Central America, in Guatemala.

Each year, since I left Nicaragua in 2006, my husband and I have gone back to Nicaragua, with a friend or 2, and Darling, our friends, and I plan activities for women in the communities that the CHE team chooses for us to work in.  

I was able to ‘interview’ Hermano Antonio and Roger for this blog while we were in Nicaragua this year. However, during our time in the communities, Darling was either meeting with leaders, or dashing off on a motorcycle with a terrified Women of CHE leader clinging to her back, to visit other CHE groups, so her ‘interview’ will have to wait until Guatemala.

In the meantime, here is her prayer letter from autumn 2010.


                                                                                     
                                    Darling and her husband, Jose Antonio (Chico)

Prayer letter 

From Darling Lopez, 

Community Health Evangelism, Nicaragua

Dear brothers and sisters,

My name is Darling Lopez de Ramirez.  I am 32 years old, married to Pastor Jose Antonio Ramirez, who worked with Medical Ambassadors for over 12 years in the Dominican Republic.  I have 2 children: Alicia, 16, and Andres, 12.

Let me take a little of your valuable time to acquaint you with the beautiful life path that God has shown me over the course of the last 10 years.  I refer to the ministry program, Community Health Evangelism, through which I came to accept Christ.  He immediately sent me to work in the CHE ministry.  I met my husband at a CHE residential training course in Guatemala.  Thanks to the support of the Thomas family in Denver, Colorado, and God, I graduated as a lawyer and notary public.  Now I work as resource facilitator for the women of the CHE program.