From the Field – Nicaragua Opportunity? – June 28, 2017
A man from Nicaragua was working on a diary farm and came in contact with one of our CLC members from Trinity Lutheran Church in Watertown, South Dakota. This led to the man visiting our church with regularity to hear the Word. He has also come to know others of our people in the congregation. Pastor Paul Krause who is the pastor has visited with him over time and reports the following.
“His name is Melvin Loza.
He is from Nicaragua.
Recent history — he had been trained in the ministry by a Bible institute set up by foreigners who came into the country.
He was trained by them, and also became a part of their teaching ‘team’ in Nicaragua. It was then that they suddenly pulled out of the country, and Melvin was left without a ‘job.’ There is currently a school – elementary age kids – that he has become involved with. The school is a joint effort – basically a private Christian school —
He will be the one teaching the ‘religion/Christianity’ that the children get.
There are a variety of people on the staff — the one who is the ‘principal’ is also on the staff at the local university.
It sounds like the school ‘should have’ a tuition, but kids can’t pay it – and so the school is left trying to find funding.
Besides the school — he is on his own trying to ‘serve a congregation’ — people who are nearby his home town of Esteli – people who ‘live’ at the dump – whose sole source of income is to scrounge through the trash and keep/sell/etc whatever they can get out of it.
We talked of the strong charismatic/Pentecostal influence that there is in Central America — he is aware of it, and finds himself not agreeing with it.
There are one or two of the things on the our web site(lutheranmissions.org) that he has worked through — particularly liked the one on charismatics.
The school he is with needs funding for teachers salaries, for supplies, educational materials…
As for his ‘side’ ministry to the dump people, he says he has also had contacts with various other pastors in the area — sounds like there have been interesting conversations.
He came up here to America in order to work at a dairy farm for a time in order to make money for both the school and for his ministry work.
The thing that I very much appreciated in my talking with Melvin is his willingness to learn from Scripture. One of the things we spent much time on is the Sacraments — and I believe we made ‘headway’ —
He just arrived back in Nicaragua today — and we are now in text communication.
I have suggested to him that we work through more of the materials online — whether on the phone or by e-mail.
I am also sending him the written form of my sermons, and he is transcribing them into Spanish for his people.
Before he left for heading on his way home a couple weeks ago, we had talked about future contacts — I asked if there might be other pastors in his area who might be interested in future talks like he and I had together — the response I got was that it would be a great idea.”
Isn’t this exciting to hear about? What an opportunity! If Pastor Krause does go south to Nicaragua to teach Melvin and others, a couple of us have offered to go down there with him to help. Please pray that this will go forward. We in our Lutheran tradition believe in teaching and learning until we see the Master face to face. The idea of starting and then abandoning the work as reported above is foreign to our outreach thinking and practice. Pray for God’s hand to guide this effort that it bear fruit.