UNIDOS Nicaragua

SAS trip – Nicaragua

fernando — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:06:35 +0000

We’ve recently returned from an amazing trip to Nicaragua, to visit the students and teachers at Havila.

We had the opportunity to take the photos of the children to be able to give to their sponsors. What a joy!

The children come to school at 7am and meet in the Rancho for breakfast and prayer and the national anthem.

Then they line up and head off to class. They return at the end of their day for lunch.

It costs about $7.00 a month to feed a child breakfast and lunch. Part of UNIDOS is the feeding program .

We had a few cards for the sponsors that needed to be finished and the students spent some time working hard on doing them.

One of the teachers, Karla, read a book to the 2nd grade class that was brought down for the library, “Los Tres Arboles”, The Three Trees.

We were able to spend time in some of the classrooms, watching the teachers teach and the kids learn.

Nancy Sodeman and her daughter joined us on the trip, translating and spending time with the kids, listening to music and making bracelets.

But we got some play time too, as the kids lined up to wait for their turn to be swung around in circles. They can wear a person out!

We made sure to take time to have our photo taken with our students that we are sponsoring, one is new to us from the orphanage.

Our contact for SAS at the school is Ena and we enjoyed spending some time with her, she shared the building of her home.

We are such a fast paced culture that we’d be looking for it to be done in months, but she is waiting for next year to continue with what has been started.

What an awesome opportunity for us to be at the school and in the community.

The teams that go down are really looked forward to by both the students and the teachers.

At this printing we have 13 students still waiting for sponsors, please contact us if you are feeling led to bless a child.

What an encouragement for us, we are so attached,

We were blessed beyond measure!

Tom and Kate Simpson

Welcome in the New School Year Team, Nicaragua

fernando — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:52:58 +0000

This year three people were able to go down to Los Cedros for the beginning of the school year. The team consisted of Kerri Fredrickson, Faith Teebken, and Lizziey Watkins. Our goal was to welcome the students and teachers back for the beginning of another school year, and to really be an encouragement and blessing to the teachers. I think it was a success.

This is the 7th opening day at the school site there. We were welcomed by 204 bright, shining faces of students, along with the teachers and parents. It was a wonderful celebration of the education they will receive again this year.

We were able to spend a great amount of time at the school, interacting with the teachers and students. We also had meetings most days with Pastora, the superintendent of the school. It was wonderful to hear her heart for this school and these children.

We also were able to help some with the serving of meals to the students. Each student now receives two meals a day. We are praying for parents to step in to help with the preparation of the food as that is a huge job. Currently there is just one person cooking these meals.

Besides being with the students and teachers each day, we took the teachers into Managua for an appreciation dinner. We had a wonderful time just having fun together, both as we were squished in our transportation and at the restaurant.

In addition to the focus on the school, we also were able to visit two of the three church plants. We went to both Calle Nueve and Reyes Norte. Besides singing, sharing, and fellowshipping with them, we brought pillowcase dresses down for the girls. Many of these were made by members of our church here. We brought down 102, and were able to hand out many of them.

It was a wonderful trip. Please consider going to Nicaragua during the beginning of February to welcome these beautiful children to this fantastic school! If you are interested, please call Kerri Fredrickson at 425-483-4690.

Women’s team in Los Cedros

fernando — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:48:23 +0000

The following is a brief summary of the women’s trip to Nicaragua:

The women’s team to Nicaragua went down in January of this year, which was a new time of year for us. The weather was delightful and quite Hawaii – like! What a blessing since we have always been there during the rainy season!

This was our 5^th trip to Los Cedros bringing a women’s conference to the women of Eben Ezer Church. Our team consisted of 11 women which was a great number to have for the ministry God had for us.

We spent Monday and Tuesday in Los Cedros and met with the leadership women of the church for prayer and ministry. We visited Monte Fresco and Calle Nueva, praying in the homes that Pastora and Pastor Manuel took us to. It was such a blessing to pray and intercede for these families with our Nicaraguan sisters. In addition, we also took rice and beans to each home we visited.

On Thursday morning we had the opportunity to share a Spanish book that we took down on “how to care for a sick child when a doctor isn’t available”. Margaret Toop taught this class to a group of about 10 women who had young children. Not only did we provide a book for each participant but also a thermometer and the training to use one. The leftover books and thermometers were left with Pastora for distribution. These 2 tools will have an immediate application because doctors are not easily available or affordable for many families living in Nicaragua. The young women had a fun time learning their new thermometer skills!

On Thursday night we began our women’s conference. We had the joy to work side by side with the women leaders in setting up the conference and preparing the myriad of details necessary to hosting a large event! Approximately 300 women attended that first night and we all enjoyed dinner together, worship led by the church ladies and a message given by Margaret. We experienced a power outage so that added an element of dependence upon God for His intervention.

Friday and Saturday were full conference days. It was so fun to welcome the women as they came! So many familiar faces and yet so many new ones. We had the great privilege to share the Word through teaching and Peggy Campbell led the women in the “how- to’s” of Bible study. It was a delight to watch them opening their Bibles and taking notes. Rebecca Folsom shared her testimony as well as Chris McCloud. Joni Kersten blessed us all as she used her gift of singing to minister the Word through song. Chris taught the women how to make a story board reflecting their life story, a tool that God can use in so many ways to encourage and give voice to things that are hard sometimes to verbalize. We also blessed them with lunch, joy bags, Bibles, rice and beans for their families and of course, our traditional Blessing Boutique. Judy Hystad worked very hard to ensure that every woman would go home with at least 3 clothing items. We had over 350 women the day of the Boutique and every single woman received their allotment plus there were many clothes left that Pastora will sell for the school that Northshore sponsors. Loretta Trainor prepared a craft for them to do; a felt clutch that held Bible verses of encouragement. Pam Garries, Kristi Scott and Monica Patten were the glue that held everything together by being in more than one place at a time!

As co-leaders, Loretta and Katie Day met with Pastora daily. What a blessing it was for us to co-minister with her and her team of ladies! We learned that she had led her team through a leadership training in December that focused on unity. As a team, we had daily been studying Ephesians in our devotion time together and one of the key focuses of Ephesians is Christ’s call to unity as believers. We were so excited when we learned that the focus the Lord had for both teams was the same! What an incredibly sweet time we had serving our Lord together!

We have been invited back to Los Cedros by Pastora and her team. We would love to welcome any women who would be interested in joining us for another Women’s Conference to Nicaragua in January of 2013! Please contact either Loretta Trainor (206-619 -2026) or Katie Day (425-488-2052) for more information.

We are humbled that God chooses us, His children, to be His hands and feet as we serve the world. As always, we came home so much richer for having gone to Nicaragua!

May the powerful name of Jesus be praised!

Katie and Loretta

Nicaragua Youth Adventure

fernando — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:04:45 +0000

1 Tim 4:12 “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” We believe in this passage and as a team of 16 students and 5 leaders we took it with us as we went to Nicaragua to set a Christ like example to whoever we were to meet. Our objective in going down there was to host a number of youth outreaches but our heart was to serve the people in whatever manner we could. We spent times working with the children at the school, doing grunt work at the Buzbee’s “Ruby Ranch”, hanging out with the youth, praying for church plants and getting demolished in soccer games. It was a fantastic trip in which God allowed us to share the gospel through testimony, drama and message to 200 young people and see the seeds being planted in their lives. We are so proud of our youth group and their hearts for the lost of Nicaragua.

The Men’s Nicaragua team NSB

fernando — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:02:51 +0000

They built a house in about 2 days, amazing!!!

Nicaragua Beauty

fernando — Thu, 12 May 2011 02:12:56 +0000

The ministry in Nicaragua continues strong and challenging. Marcia Gladwish is making a beautiful mural with a banner held by people from Nicaragua and people from Northshore. We have a great team here that is working hard to support and encourage our partnership in Nicaragua. We thank you Marcia for all the beautiful work you are doing there!

Missions Weekend-Nicaragua Night

fernando — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:01:54 +0000

Friday, March 25 at 6:30pm at Northshore Baptist Church 10301 NE 145th St. Bothell, WA 98011 425-821-5252

Enjoy a great Nicaraguan dinner, learn about upcoming trips, hear about future ministry plans, and even pick up some Nicaraguan art pieces!

Nicaragua Update

admin — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:41:14 +0000

A small team went to Los Cedros, Nicaragua, for the opening of the school year from February 11-21. They were able to spend time in the classrooms helping the students work on their picture folders for their sponsors here. They also visited and taught at each of the daughter churches. Dresses from Sew Delightful, a group who makes dresses from pillow cases to dress girls in need around the world, were sent down to be handed out, and many photos were taken of the happy faces of the recipients. It was a wonderful and successful trip!

If you have any question or need more information on this trip, please contact Kerri Fredrickson at kerritoddf@hotmail.com.

April Men’s Trip Report

joshk — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:09:59 +0000

In April, a team of 10 men spent 10 days in Los Cedros with two objectives, to
build a home for a woman and her two daughters, and to put on a men’s conference for the men of the community.

The home-building project was for Reyna, a woman of long standing and
excellent repute in the community who leads a new church fellowship in Reyes Norte. Reyna has six children, two of whom live with her, and she lost her house last fall. Her family has a small piece of land directly across the street from Escuela Cristiana Havila, and our team helped build a house on that land.

The site was prepared before our arrival by a crew of local men, who leveled the
site and laid the stone foundation. We worked for three days putting up walls and a roof.
We did not quite finish the house, but we were able to leave behind enough money to buy
the remaining needed materials and pay for local labor to finish the job.

One of the wonderful parts of working on Reyna’s house was that we were joined
in the labor by Jose and two other men, Marvin and Juan. Jose was there because it
was his mother’s house. Marvin and Juan are men whose houses were remodeled last November by another short-term team. They were eager to pay it forward and join us in laboring on somebody else’s house, and it was sweet to be part of that process.

The second half of our time was devoted to a men’s conference, which was held
at the school. We started Friday night with dinner, some icebreaker games, life stories from two of our team members, and a lot of opportunities to visit and get to know each other.

Saturday was a full day at the conference. Three team members delivered
lessons, one on being a son, one on being a husband, and one on being a father, and four
other team members shared life stories around those topics. In addition, four local men
asked for opportunities to share their life stories in response, and we heard those as well.

In between all that, we had lunch and dinner together, played baseball, and generally got to know each other as men at a level that few team members had previously experienced. Altogether, 57 Nicaraguan men attended the conference, and many of them shared openly with us that it had a profound impact upon them.

Write to your Student today!

joshk — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:00:16 +0000

It’s that time again to write to your sponsored student at Colegio Cristiano Havilah. You may already be keeping in regular contact with your student. If so, that is great. If not, we would like to encourage you to send your student a note to encourage them. This can be done very easily by using the form found on the website.

Simply follow this link http://unidosnicaragua.org/sponsor-a-student/write-to-your-student/

We will be translating and sending down all of the messages we receive on “ “. So please have your message sent no later than “ “.

These letters mean a great deal to the students. Your student will love to know about your life and about what is happening in the world around you. We will be sending letters back from you students as well. So ask questions about your students. The would love to fill you in.

Please let your student know how much they mean to you today!