This spring FBC McMinnville came together to send a group of ten delegates to El Calderon, Nicaragua in July.  This group worked alongside the El Calderon health committee and health promoter Silvina Lainez to

• Conduct a health screening for children

• Carry out a nutrition project

• Supervise water filters

We also continued friendships started with our first trip to the area in 2008 and continued in subsequent trips in 2010, 2012, and 2014.  We learned from missionaries, Drs. David and Laura Parajon and from our delegation coordinators, John Caroll and Felicia Zamora, that delegations like ours are vital to giving people more knowledge, skills, and passion to address health issues in their communities. 

Each journey expands our understanding of the complexities of poverty.  Each journey helps us better understand our role in accompanying the community to provide for its own health care despite the seemingly overwhelming challenges of that poverty.  And each journey shares the message that we here at FBC McMinnville accompany them not only by our presence for one week, but also by our year round love and prayers.

Delegates return with an abundance of emotions, thoughts, prayers, and ideas, uniquely experienced by each traveler.  After debriefing, we do recognize themes. 

• Gratitude to God, to our supporters, to our hosts in El Calderon, and to the people of AMOS

• Questions:  Did we do enough?  Can we do more?  Can we do it better?  Why does this poverty exist?

• A desire to know more about El Calderon and Nicaragua, social justice, poverty and more, more, more!

• Delight in the joy and faith in God of the people of El Calderon and AMOS.

• Wonder about how God will lead us as individuals, as the Nica team, and as a church to use this experience

Both the telling of the journey and the hearing of the journey are essential to discerning where God will lead all of us next in our friendship with and support of the people of El Calderon and all of those in poverty whether they live here with us in McMinnville or across the oceans.  Let us go with God!  Vaya con dios!