Hey everyone, sorry its taken me so long to post another update.  This will be the one of the last updates I write during this year; another one coming once the year comes to a close and we wrap up ministry operations here in Managua for the Christmas and New Year break.  I would like to begin this update a little more personally, hope you don’t mind me sharing.

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. -Romans 12:11

How true these words from the apostle Paul really are; how often over these past few months I have found myself battling to stay “on fire” for the Lord and his work.  Its one of those things that I struggle to find words to describe.  How did I get so numb?  Where has my joy gone in serving others?  Why am I feeling so apathetic towards what I once felt so much enthusiasm in doing?  What happened?  When did this become such a struggle and why hasn’t this struggle not gotten easier as the days go by?

The simple answer to these questions is not a difficult one for me to find, although perhaps difficult to accept.  Over the last few months gone by I had let my life’s objective slip slowly out of its rightful place as all-consuming and all-satisfying; I had in some complacent and comfort seeking way forgotten that Christ HAS to be at the center of my every moment, of my every good work.  The troubling thing is that I would have never declared that He wasn’t my king and my Lord, but with my actions and attitude I had sad it all so clearly, and by this habitual backsliding I had lost the joy and the peace I had once reveled in.  When this happens to us believers, worry begins to creep in and doubting the Holy Spirit’s power begins to eat away at our faith little by little.  If this fall is allowed to gain momentum it isn’t long before we begin to act out in our own abilities, trusting in our gifts more than the gift-giver.  This is where I found myself.

Yah . . . you can look at all the projects, ministries, houses rebuilt, kids being fed and you can say but, but, but . . . but nothing, it will all burn in the end and all that will be left is the source of our divine motivation and faith, or lack their of.  Don’t misunderstand me, these “good works” are good, but only if they are done to glorify Christ and done in our weakness so that He may be seen as He intends to be seen, in glory and honor.  To my discredit I had allowed the evil one to chip away at my foundation in Christ alone, and I had begun to trust in the works themselves and their worth in the eyes of man.  Shamefully I accept my lack of faith and hunger for His presence, but I humbly receive the reprove and solemnly, but boldly turn to the rest of my time here in Nicaragua this year and onward with eager expectation and confidence that He will show himself strong and mighty to do new things, miraculous things through my weakness and dependence on his mighty right hand.  All glory be to God!

Since the last update we have had a couple projects that we have been so blessed to be a part of.  In October we had a mission team come down from The River Community Church of Cookeville, Tennessee to spend a week with us; what a blessing they were in several ways!  The team took the kids to spend 3 days out by Lake Nicaragua for some games, Bible study, worship and of course playing in the water.  The kids loved it, as this was just the 2nd time they had been treated to such a trip.  The team did a wonderful job preparing for the camp with a much smaller group to run the activities than normal, and less space and facility availability due to flooding.

Secondly, the team also provided the funds for The Isaiah Ministry to assist the local church in constructing a viable water source for a displaced community living in the local trash dump due to the flooding of the rainy season.   I really wanted for this group to get to know the local church in a more personal way and do whatever we could to build them up, after-all the church is the primary presence of aid in this specific community in the trash dump.  The project only took one day to complete, which can be primarily contributed to the people of the community and church supplying most of the manual labor needed.  As you can see in the pictures there was a lot of digging and we were sure blessed to be able to take part in project of the day, but were even more pleased to know that those living in the community would now have easier access to running water.

The team also did some street evangelism in the community in which The Isiah Project is based, Rafael Rios, and I can tell you without a doubt that the families and people they witnessed to were blessed as well as the team.  Thank you team for coming down and being so open to the Holy Spirit’s leadership and direction.  You were and are a blessing to us!

We are also in the middle of rebuilding a home for one of the families that we support through our family sponsorship program. This has been a great joy for me personally to see this project realized due to my close relationship with the family, Yelva (widowed grandma), Eva Maria (granddaughter) and Josúe David (grandson). The house was practically falling down around them and probably would not have stood up to the weather much longer. Yelva and the kids also live in what is the most dangerous neighborhood I have known in Managua, with gangs, thieves, and drug dealers on every corner. Needless to say, I am thankful that we are able to provide them with a safer place to call home. The construction should be done in less than a week and will tally all said and done at around 3,000.00 dollars. Honestly, I can’t think of a better way I would have wanted to see this money spent. Thank you so much all of you who have contributed to the ministry to make this possible! You will never know how much this means to them, truthfully.

To close, I’d like to let all of you know that we have begun the process of receiving applications and visiting families to feel out where the Lord would lead us in selecting the new kids for next year.  We are looking to add about 10 new kids to the child sponsorship program.  We would love to accept more, but as we are still operating out of a small home, even 10 will be a significant increase.  Please pray with us that the Lord guides us clearly in who will join The Isaiah Ministry family.  I am hoping that in the next 2 weeks I will have pictures and short biographies available on the website for those of you who feel lead to sponsor a child.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support throughout this year.  To God be the glory great things he hath done!

Michael

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by to read the latest from The Isaiah Ministry outpost here in Nicaragua. Sorry I don’t have the photos of the baptisms that took place a little while back, if you were looking for them.  I will do my best to get the photos uploaded on to the site here later this week.  As far as events go, the baptismal and Lord’s supper service has definitely been the highlight over the past month or so.  We had been planning on having a baptismal service for a while now, but as scheduling and financial details needed to match up, it took us a while to actual make it come to pass.  All in God’s timing though right?  So, after some donations gave us the ability to rent a bus and make the provisions for the day trip to the beach, we prayerfully made our way down to the shore of the Pacific.

We didn’t have a huge crowd, about 25, less than I expected originally.  However, I have often found that smaller crowds for such an event make things more personal for all those in attendance, especially for those who are actually involved in what’s taking place.  We essentially had a mini-service right there on the beach; singing a few praise songs together and spending a time in prayer to ask the Lord yet again to bless the day and true intent of the ceremony.  After spending about 20 minutes or so covering the significance and meaning of partaking in the Lord’s supper and baptism, each of the eight to be baptized shared with us a short testimony and why they desired to be baptized this day.  Honestly, I was expecting a flood of emotion during the time of testimony from them and myself, however, I was surprised to find out that that was not the case.  In actuality, the Holy Spirit covered the ceremony with a sense of joy and thankfulness, each of us could attest to the warm sense of satisfaction we felt within, which is gifted to us by God when when we know we are acting in obedience to His commands.  This joy carried over into the actual baptisms.  The Lord provided us with a moment of sun while we were out in the ocean, although the waves crashing on us did make for an interesting challenge as only one of us had experienced baptisms in this manner.  However, all went off extremely well without a hitch and we are happy to declare that the eight were baptized, some after many years of waiting.

To be honest, I felt pretty unworthy and awkward being the one administering the Lord’s supper and baptisms. This was my first time administering both and therefore my first time administering both in the same service as well.  I feel that I felt this way because I prepared myself for the ceremony with much prayer and study of the Word to ensure that I would be in the right state spiritually and mentally to be the one leading the ceremony.  I personally feel that if we ever get tired or bored or even think we get “it”, no more prayer or study is required to bring us into a deeper closeness with the significance of the sacraments, it may be time we allow someone else to take our place.  I hope I never get to the point where I take for granted the Lord’s supper or the significance of baptism, although just steps of obedience and outward symbols of what has already happened in our hearts and spirits, they are acts to be administered with much reverence and meditation.

We at the Project here in Managua feel that we have entered a season of prayer and meditation.  Not that we haven’t already been praying for each of the kids throughout the year up to this point, but within the last month or so the weight of the lost souls that pass through the Project walls each day has grown heavy on our spirits. All of our efforts to preach the gospel to the kids with fervor and sincere devotion have seemed to fall on deaf ears and hardened hearts.  I would love to be writing to you all, telling you that we have seen the majority of the kids in the Project come to Christ and bear spiritual fruit with their lives, however, this would not be the truth. We have prayed with several of the older kids after Bible studies in the past who have proclaimed with their mouth “Jesus is Lord”, but we have yet to see any connection between what was said and how this declaration has been lived out in their lives on a daily basis with any true conviction and conviction.  This is a heavy burden to bear, at least for me, watching so many young souls be deceived by religion and cultural Christianity.

As I have said many times before, our mission here in Nicaragua is not to preach strictly words from the Bible, but to preach real truth, to preach Christ crucified and raised from the dead for each individual soul on this earth.  To preach about the decision that is to be made between Christ and everything else, and that indifference or half-hearted attempts to provide a personal answer may as well be a resounding “NO, I DONT WANT YOU IN MY LIFE!” to the God who loves and will judge us.  It isn’t enough to go to church, it isn’t enough to recite a prayer over and over again, it isn’t enough to be Catholic or Evangelical, none of these things save us from the fires of hell.  All of our kids have been to church before, all of our kids have prayed before, all of them have heard that Jesus is the son of God, but if only hearing of the truth and not really believing it saved us, what would be the significance of Christ’s death on the cross?  What would be the significance of his resurrection from the dead and conquering the power of sin once and for all?

These are the things that way on my mind and the things that push us into deeper prayer at The Isaiah Ministry.  We are NOT here to just do good things, feed some kids and help them get good grades;  all this is rubbish if we are not primarily motivated by a deep-rooted concern for their eternal future, which will be spent in heaven or hell.  Join us in fervent prayer for the kids of The Isaiah Ministry.  Join us in begging the Lord for more of his presence over the Project; that everything we do would continue to be rooted in the gospel truth.  We know He is listening to our pleas, so we also pray for patience and faith that His word will not be washed from the hearts of the kids by the worries and problems of the world.  That somewhere deep down, a seed has been planted and is being watered by The Isaiah Ministry through our obedience to Christ.

Below are a few pictures of some of our kids and families receiving their first personal Bible.  Many thanks to Priscilla for enabling this to happen.  As always, grace and peace to all of you who have joined us in the struggle.  Let us not grow weary!

Michael

To start off I want to tell all of you thank you who prayed for my ministry partner, Alfredo, while he was hospitalized by a potentially fatal internal parasite and praise be to God he has just about regained all of his strength while recuperating at home. It’s crazy how quickly a sickness can escalate and we certainly saw this in Alfredo’s case. It all started with stomach pain which quickly put him in the hospital needing daily/nightly iv’s to combat sever dehydration from vomiting and anti-parasite injections to kill the parasite that was reeking havoc with his digestive and urinary systems. It took 5 days in the hospital under constant care, many painful injections, and a lot of prayer to get him through it, but here we stand on the other end of it thanking the Lord for healing Alfredo and bringing him back to us.

We have also been so very blessed to have had a high school/collegiate mission-team come down from Norfolk Christian Academy this past week to visit the ministry and bless our kids and staff. This was a large team of about 40 and they sure did have a packed schedule for their 9 days in Nicaragua, so we were so very thankful to have them for a couple of days. This was also the first mission-team to visit The Isaiah Ministry, so we were all pretty excited about it. The first day the team came by to visit was with the intent of painting The Isaiah Project center and gifting used and new clothing to each of the 30 kids. They purchased all the paint and even brought their own tools; we just sat back and watched for the most part and enjoyed watching all the kids get to pick out a few clothing items.

Norfolk Christian Academy also took our kids and staff on a day-trip to a water-park in a town about an hour outside of Managua. I kept it a surprise from the kids during the week and up until we arrived, so as you can imagine it was killing them to have to wait to see where they would be going. The rain held off for us and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves on the water-slides and playing in the pool with the team. After the day in the park the team even took us by a shoe store on the way home to buy each Isaiah Project kid and staff member a new pair of shoes. Needless to say our kids were ecstatic, as pretty much every one of them was either without a pair of shoes for school or for recreation.

While the team was here we also had a news crew from a local Nicaraguan Christian channel come by and do a story on The Isaiah Project. This was arranged by a friend of mine who is friends with someone who works at the station; so unexpected as it was we not only had a our first mission-team at the Project blessing us we also had our first story run on our humble little ministry We really don’t know what to expect from the media attention, but we only hope that God uses it to raise awareness of the need for those in communities such as Rafael Rios to work together in Christ to provide for those who have less than they do. For as we all know, no matter how poor we are, or difficult of a situation we find ourselves in, there is always someone less fortunate than ourselves.

Lastly, I would also like to introduce all of you to our newest addition to the family sponsorship outreach of The Isaiah Ministry, the Zeledón family. The Zeledón family consists of Rosina, a hard working single mom, and her three kids Angel, Alondra, and Guadalupe. Rosina is employed as the secretary of the local elementary school and works very hard long hours, but is paid very little. The father of her kids has not been in their lives for some time now as she has pretty much been doing on her own for years. They live in a tiny house near the Project and I am pretty sure have never known, never tasted of the grace and mercy of our Lord. I hope to get to know them better day by day and with each visit share with them the love and kindness with which Christ has so abundantly showered upon me. Please remember them in your prayers.

Check back soon as I will try to update the blog with more exciting news of a service project we have recently begun!  God’s grace and mercy to you all!

Michael

Hello all!  The time has arrived for me to let you all in on the events of the last two weeks.  Wow, so much has been going that to be honest, I have kinda been dreading writing this update, as I often struggle to find the right words to describe what we experience here at the Isaiah Ministry.  However, I will do my best to paint an accurate picture for you of what life has been like over the past few weeks here in Managua.

Thanks to your donations and support of the Isaiah Project we were able to extend the roof of the home out of which we operate to provide more shade and protection from the monsoon-like Nicaraguan rains that have already begun to fall.  I can’t tell you how man times we have looked at one another and said, “Wow, thank God for this roof!”  The sun here is still scorching and with this extension on the roof all of the kids can now work under shade much more comfortably than before.  To the right is a picture of the new extended roof.

I am also very excited to let all of you sponsoring a child know that our kids sat down to individually write you all a letter.  This being the first letter they have written to you they were pretty nervous about it and took it pretty seriously, actually I think they took it more seriously than they have ever taken their homework However, they were all very excited to write you and spent practically a whole day on the weekend working on their letters.  Our older kids were so good working with the littler ones who can’t write or read well. are hoping to be able to mail these letter out to you within a couple of weeks when Eli travels back to the U.S.  We will also include a updated picture of your child for you to stick on your fridge or where ever you wish to proudly display it  We are also doing the same thing for those of you who are supporting a family. Likewise, you can expect to receive a letter and updated picture of your sponsored within the month.  We hope to be able to send correspondence letters to each of you from our sponsored children and families every couple of months.  As I mentioned before the best way to communicate, or the fastest way to communicate with your sponsor child family is by email, as we can receive and translate your emails as you send them.  But . . . if you would like to hand write a letter or send a picture to your child or family you can do so by mailing it to this address: 2517 Fairway Drive, Greensboro, North Carolina 27408. Simply address the envelope to The Isaiah Ministry and we will do our best to get it to your child or family as soon as we can.

As some of you know we have been conducting a mini baptismal series over the past couple of weeks for those enrolled/working with The Isaiah Project who have accepted Christ and would like to be baptized.  We have quite the list for such a small ministry of those who will be baptized, of which our latest new-comer to the kingdom of God is Maura, our hard-working cook and mom to three children enrolled in the Project.  What a blessing it is for us to be able to take part in leading these fellow believers in baptism.  Neither Eli nor I have ever been asked to baptize anyone before, so we are completely humbled by the honor the Lord has laid at our feet.  We take baptism, a necessary step of obedience for every true believer, very seriously and have done our best to present what it means and the spiritual purpose it serves to those who will soon take part.  We will make sure to take pictures and perhaps even a video to share the glorious moment with you on the next update.

So . . . we just completed the first quarter of the school year and have collected all the report cards of all 30 of our kids enrolled in the elementary and high-school.  I have to admit, collecting report cards is not one of my favorite aspects of ministry work for a couple of reasons.  One being that in order to receive your child’s report card you have to spend several hours in the school listening to complaint after complaint from teachers about how bad the kids are and from the parents about how insufficient the school system is.  Its just all around a depressing experience. Secondly, I always dread finding out which kids are seriously struggling in school, whether it be in their conduct or in the class performance.  I do not enjoy finding out that one or several of our kids are failing their classes and have no idea of the value of hard work or responsibility.  It saddens me to have put so much time into building up a child’s character to find out that it hasn’t been paying off in the classroom. That being said, amidst the negative aspects of the education system and our frustrations with its insufficiency, we do have several awesome reports to let you in on.

We did have several kids that excelled this quarter.  To the left is a picture of Javier and Rachel with their respective report cards.  Rachel really surprised us with how well she faired with her grades, especially with math.  Rachel is such a precious little thing and just loves to color and ride bikes, but it has always been a bit of a struggle to get her to work on her times-tables, as pretty much none of the kids enjoy that aspect of math-work.  Well . . . Rachel scored 100% in not only her math class but every other class as well!  It seems the work has payed off and Rachel is beginning to see the joy she can have in taking ownership of her grades.

Javier also put a big smile on our faces and warmed our hearts with not only his good grades but more importantly was his realization of what his good grades meant. Shortly after returning to the Project to eat lunch after receiving his report card Javier was found sitting alone at a table crying.  After being questioned as to what was wrong it was soon discovered that the reason for Javier’s tears was not due to a harsh word by his mother or joke made at his expense by another student, but due to his realization that God does indeed care about him and listens to his prayers.  Javier had been struggling in school since the first grade, however, since the beginning of this year he had been praying daily for God to help him in school and to give him wisdom in class.  Javier was crying that day because he got a glimpse of the sovereignty of God; yes we serve a BIG God, but a God that cares about the little things too.  We are praying that this encounter with our loving Creator will encourage Javier to open up even more to God’s plan for his life and to accept Christ as his Lord.

Please continue to pray for our kids and the direction of this humble ministry.  We are seeing great things happen here, none of it would be possible without all of you. Don’t forget to hug your mom and tell her how much you love her this Mother’s Day Weekend!

Blessings in Christ.

Michael

Hey all. Just wanted to let everyone know that we had our first morning of prayer at the High School here in Managua where about 10 of our kids attend. 8 kids and I met together in front of the school before classes began and prayed. It was wonderful. Nerves were overcome and cares about what others thought faded away as we stopped before the kids entered the school doors to pause, give thanks, and pray for the school and all that attend or work there.

After a pretty intense time of prayer not too long ago, the Lord laid it upon my heart to begin empowering our kids through prayer and to teach them that glorifying God does not only need to happen inside the walls of our Project or a church. Specifically, the Lord led me to the idea of beginning a prayer group at the High School in the mornings. The following day I spoke with several of the kids that the Lord had placed on my heart to be a part of this endeavor and of which I have seen a real hunger for the Lord and spiritual growth over the last few months. I was elated to see that they all wanted to be a part of this prayer group and were even excited to begin to really have an impact on their school and live out the “salt” and “light” analogy Christ sets forth in his Word.

However, this morning prayer time is not confined to The Isaiah Project kids, we are inviting all that would want to join us in glorifying God and pleading for his Spirit to fall upon the school to meet with us for prayer. Our hope is that we would begin to see real change in the lives of the lost that walk the halls of the school. For me, along with this desire I truly long for our kids to see that the Lord listens to them, that they too have the ability and power, through prayer, to call on the Holy Spirit to glorify himself through the coming of his righteousness to those who don’t know him right in front of their eyes. We are hoping that this will be the beginning of many more mornings of prayer at the High School and I hope that in time I will not have to be there to make sure it happens, but that they will begin to take it upon themselves to meet and pray together.

That’s all for now! I just had to let you all know, how exciting right?! Praise God!

Michael