Spiritual T-Shirts

Rachel and I are getting excited to come home this Christmas for a few weeks and visit everyone in Maine as well as gather our documents for our Nica residency permits. We have been busy this week getting a foundation set up and poured for Maine Street Baptist in February that will be building the addition for the Morenco family down the beach. We are also signing up kids for a camp they will run and ESL classes they will have for the school teachers and other locals who are interested.

Our local school down the beach let out last week for the end of the year. I decided to attend the Parent/Teacher meeting with Oscar. As report cards were being passed out I decided to take a peek at His son's (Yasser) grades. He is an excellent student and gets very good grades maybe one day he can attend Chop Point if he wishes and then return to Nicaragua to make a difference. He begins English classes in a year.
At the local school meeting I began to notice the situation many of the people in our area are in. Most of them walked to the meeting, some rode their horse drawn carts, and maybe one or two rolled in on a beat up motorbike. I began to notice a considerable difference between the families living in Buenos Aires and those living 10 minutes away in Rivas. I had never really noticed the large social gap before, sometimes coming straight from America you see everyone as poor in Nicaragua; but in actuality there really is a large dividing line between a small town like Rivas and the even more forgotten countryside surrounding Camp. Tattered cloths, no electricity, little work and little healthcare is the daily life for so many people in our area. Driving ten minutes away in San Jorge you begin to instantly see homes with cars, water and electricity.

The school struggles so much; they are a hundred yards from power lines but will never have the money to get electricity at the school for fans, lights or a water pump. Not only does “organization” seem to drop off at Buenos Aires but so does help. The missionary line in Nicaragua still seems to diminish around the Granada area, and only two other families besides ours are currently in Rivas. There is a definite battle to fight discouragement and hopelessness in towns like Buenos Aires that you can see so vividly as I talked to the teachers about the future of the school.

It can get difficult living in a Rivas, it’s off the beaten track for missions and there are very few ex-pats to mingle with. Even in the travel books, all of the cities of Nicaragua are highlighted for tourists, except for Rivas. Most travel books recommend the only reason anyone would want to stay in Rivas is if you’re passing through on your way to Ometepe, San Juan or Costa Rica. Even when I talk with mission teams and missionaries in Nicaragua, it’s a common line to mention how far away Campo is from Managua and how much easier it is to go to the other cities in Nicaragua with mission teams.

As I was listening to the financial plans for this coming year at the school I noticed a child sitting in front of me on a step patiently waiting for the long “boring” meeting to get over. He was playing with rocks and twigs on the ground in front of him trying his hardest to be patient. As I was thinking about the irony in the lack of money, help and man power available for a country so close to the U.S., I notice one of my favorite things in Nicaragua.

The boy’s shirt said Wells Beach. Even when I saw the shirt, Wells Beach didn’t click at first. But then after thinking a little bit more, of course it was a shirt from Wells Beach, Maine. In a small country town in Southern Nicaragua, where there are no major mission bases or constant flows of missions teams - you can find shirts that mark the treading of a small non-profit organization in Woolwich, Maine. Sure you can find signs of Chop Point in La Chureca and probably some other parts of Nica as well, but it’s more impressive to me that you can find signs of donations and volunteer work in a “forgotten town” like Buenos Aires. This is boring to most people and it really isn’t that big of a deal, but I find the more I invest my time in Campo the more rewarding it is to see the impact in the community.
More than anything, a t-shirt is a symbol for something much greater than just clothing. It’s a sign of the eternal impact that Campo Alegría is making in peoples lives. Every camp we have is another seed that is sown, another opportunity to follow up on, and another door is opened; it’s a huge calling. It is overwhelming sometimes when I realized how isolated we really are here. Sometimes it crosses my mind that if only Campo was a little bit closer to Managua than all of our problems would be solved. But seeing a shirt from Wells Beach, Maine on a child who may not have means to buy new shirts at all reminds me that we are exactly where God wants us, and in the end it will be worth all of the struggles.

I wonder how many “spiritual t-shirts" I pass every day in our community. How many people are wearing the impact of Campo Alegría, and all of the time and prayer that has gone into the community? How many kids have come to our camps and had an experience that will last a lifetime?

I suppose that’s how God sees us. We all have t-shirts that show a history of our lives. Things that have impacted us and encouraged us in the past that shaped us into what we are today.
I guess I have a spiritual t-shirt as well from Chop Point, from when I was a camper. I suppose it would have words on it like: Love, Forgiveness and Redemption on it. There are people and experiences that God has used to shape me into the person I am today because they took the time. What an honor it is to be a part of something much bigger than we will ever see or comprehend.

Lots to be done ...

I visited the school in Buenos Aires and checked in on how they are doing. The screens on the windows have held up, the well is working and the schools paint looks pretty good. After assessing their situation, there is a need for a bathroom makeover. It is a “porta potty” style with shallow holes for the waste, and at this point I wouldn’t want to know how many fly’s go in and out and then land on the kids. The smell gets unbearable inside and there is little privacy, especially for the staff. The teachers told me that if there is anything we ever want to do to help out that situation they would gladly receive it. Since they get so much wind from the lake a windmill connected to their pump, a water tank, septic tank and some piping could get them flushable toilets. In the calm season a $160.00 dollar generator and a small pump would fill their tank every week. The wooden slats on the bathroom walls are getting beyond just paint every year and should probably be replaced sometime soon. We may be able to convince the Mayor to give a small amount per month for gasoline in the generator. The whole project would probably be around $2,500 for supplies.



I have made an American friend in San Jorge who owns a hotel a few blocks from our house. He has five horses that he keeps on his property year around and originally had bought them to ride. As most horse owners he has now decided that he’s not able to ride them as much as needed. After explaining to him what we do at Camp and that we are interested in incorporating horse back riding he suggested that we take his horses on permanent loan. He gave us two Geldings, a Mare, and two Colts along with two saddles. The horses are enough to begin a small program that hopefully will be a fun activity for the kids at camp as well as gringo mission teams passing through.

I met with Halle August last week and picked his brain on the last four or five years that he has been here. What an amazing ministry he has going on, and what a huge impact sports can have on children’s lives especially in this country. It would be great if one day Campo could have a finished baseball and soccer field available for the local community to use, as well as the use for our camps. There are many churches (in the south especially) that would love to come and run simple sports camps for a week at a time. It would be a lot of work though to level and grade the land the cattle are currently on, but of course as always, it’s nothing for God.