My second trip to Nicaragua with Project H.O.P.E., the last
week of July, was the stuff of Acts. On Sunday morning, I preached a message to
our team (that I was afraid to preach) from Acts, chapter four. We learned that
the early church expected signs and wonders to accompany their mission. What
did we expect for our week of mission? The early church asked for boldness,
expected miracles, and got both. We decided to do the same, and God responded
beyond what most of us ever could have hoped. I’ve seen God work powerfully
before, including last year’s trip, but I’ve never seen God work like this. We saw the stuff of Acts. “And the Lord added to their number day by
day, those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). But numbers don’t really tell
the story.
One day, while I was working on blocks, a man named Jose
came up to say, “Hi.” I had baptized his sister last year. Jose remembered me
and I remembered him. I asked him if we could talk for a minute, and I grabbed that
all-important translator. I began to share the gospel with him, “cold turkey.” He
was hungry for it. Like so many others, he knew who Jesus was and what Jesus
did, but he had never trusted in Jesus as his Savior. I was privileged to help
Jose do that and then to help him see from Scripture that he needed to be
baptized as a public profession of his faith. He was literally jumping up and
down. This started a chain reaction of evangelism. Over the next two and a half
days, I was privileged to lead about 15 people to Christ through one-on-one conversation
(in between loads of cement). On Thursday I was blessed to baptize 13 of
those, but that isn’t even close to the whole story.
As “camp pastor” it was my privilege to sort of “set the
tone” each night during our worship time, and the tone became evangelism,
because that is what God was doing. We did a lot of praying and a little
training. Quickly others in our group were caught up in the fire of God’s
moving, and we were sharing Christ while we worked. Women’s ministry, VBS and
everything else we were doing was bearing great fruit. It was all real. In the
end, many of us were used by God to lead people to Jesus, and many of us
baptized folks. In fact, on Thursday, we baptized 37 Nicaraguans and one Gringo,
one of our own who had been so impressed by the work of God that he finally made
a decision he had never before been willing to make, trusting Jesus to save him.
Among the 37 Nicaraguans, two of them were our wonderful translators, who, after
some conversations, realized they needed to be baptized since they had recently
trusted in Christ. The move of God had gone viral. Soli Deo gloria!
Thirty-eight people were baptized after four days of
ministry. Wow. Pause for a moment and think about this. Many of these trusted
Christ for the first time this very week. Others, not included in this number,
were saved but will later be baptized through other groups. Some are planting,
some are watering, and God is bringing a harvest. We’re talking about men,
women and children who moved from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of
light this week. They were saved because of God’s love and the faithfulness of
His children to share Christ with the nations. They knew how to be saved,
because we told them (Romans 10:14).
Building houses for people in need is a wonderful thing to
do. Helping them acquire mansions in heaven is even better. God is working in
Mateare. I pray this is only the beginning of a spiritual awakening that will
sweep through Nicaragua. What a privilege to join in the clear working of God!
