By Nancy Pickett, WHPC Mission Committee Member
WHPC has been actively serving in Nicaragua for over 25 years. We have deep roots with many partners and dear friends. This post highlights three partners—AMOS Health and Hope, Colegio Cristiano Presbyteriano (CCP), and Eden Center—who will benefit directly from WHPC’s Special Offering for COVID-19 Relief. Learning more about them, I hope you will be inspired to give to the offering, which closes at the end of this month.
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AMOS Health and Hope is a Christian nonprofit organization that exists to improve the health of impoverished communities by working alongside them in health, education, and development. This ministry was started in 1967 by Dr. Gustavo Parajón and is continued today by his son and daughter-in-law, Dr. David and Dr. Laura Parajón. AMOS operates multiple clinics and works with health promotors in rural areas of Nicaragua. They work hard to train and educate local and rural medical providers.
Over the past five years, WHPC members and friends have partnered with AMOS through Spring Break Mission Trips. In March 2020, we also hosted Dr. Laura in the Third Well class. She also appeared as a guest speaker for Austin Samaritans. WHPC is praying about the possibility of hosting a women’s mission trip with AMOS. Our focus would be young mothers and their children who live near AMOS.
AMOS is an amazing ministry, and we are honored to be partnering with them for the Special Offering for COVID-19 Relief. Donations will go toward COVID-19 training and safety kits for doctors working in Managua and rural communities.
The contents of a COVID-19 kit. AMOS Health & Hope needs supplies like these to serve poor and rural communities through the pandemic; WHPC donations will help provide them.
Colegio Cristiano Presbyteriano (CCP) is one of our longest standing Nicaragua partners. WHPC has been serving with CCP since March 2008. Sarah and Pablo Kim, Korean missionaries, are the current directors of the school. Sarah is the official director, but it is definitely a family partnership.
Pablo and Sarah host students and young adults in their home as a way of training them to be Christian leaders in the church and their community. Many of these young adults are now teachers at CCP. This has had a huge impact on the positive growth of CCP’s curriculum and ministry.
After our first WHPC mission trip to CCP in 2008, we realized that we wanted to be more than just a once-a-year contributor. WHPC members have visited regularly for school graduations, and the church committed to providing a yearly vacation Bible school (VBS), which has grown to include over 400 students. Both CCP and neighborhood children and parents attend. It’s amazing how many parents want to come and help and just be part of something as simple as a VBS program, something they never had growing up. I love how God works!
Partnering with CCP has been one of our greatest blessings. We have developed deep and lasting friendships, as well as seen amazing fruit from God. Many young people, as well as their parents, have come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. The level of education has greatly improved, and the facility has grown in ways that would otherwise not have been possible. For 2020, the enrollment at CCP is approximately 350 students, Kindergarten to 11th grade.
Over the years, WHPC has helped to build classrooms, playgrounds, and security walls. Our church has also helped CCP provide educational programs, computers, and scholarships, both to CCP and for secondary education for its students.
During this time of pandemic, CCP parents are struggling to meet expenses, as jobs are being cut and people are sick. CCP is struggling, too, because of reduced funding from partners and tuitions. Through the Special Offering for COVID-19 Relief, WHPC has an opportunity to step up and make an immediate difference.
WHPC members visited CCP for its graduation ceremony in December 2019. From left are Sarah Kim, CCP Director; WHPC members Renee Ernst, Chris Pickett, Nancy and Jay Pickett; Natan, friend and translator; and Pablo Kim, also in leadership at CCP.
Eden Center is a school built from the ground up! In 2009, Korean missionaries Abraham and Ana Jung had a dream to start a Christian school in Nicaragua. They invested all they had and prayed for God’s guidance to move forward. With the help of missionary colleagues, they developed relationships with mission teams and planted seeds that have, over the years, fully taken root. Since 2011, WHPC has been a mission partner.
Abraham and Ana believed that if they started with the youngest Pre-K students and grew their classes steadily each year, they would have a healthy, Christ-centered learning environment. We believe they have succeeded! Eden is an amazing school and has grown to almost 350 students over the past ten years.
In 2013, six high-school girls from WHPC went with us on a mission trip that included Eden Center. As a result of that experience, Agua for Managua was formed. The students returned with a passion for making a difference in Nicaragua. Over the years, Agua for Managua has helped to finish a water purification center and to build a security wall, a sport court, classrooms, dorms, and a library. Agua for Managua is currently working on funding a school bus. God has worked through Agua for Managua and continues to work to change the lives of WHPC students and the lives of our dear friends in Nicaragua.
Over the past ten years, WHPC volunteers have led VBS for over 350 students/year at Eden Center. Members have visited for graduations at Eden Center as well, as with CCP, and been featured speakers.
Eden Center is looked to with pride and respect, within its community and across Nicaragua. Many families are seeking to send their students to them for a quality education. However, like CCP, Eden Center is struggling to make ends meet this year. Parents have lost jobs, and as a result they are not able to pay tuition. Mission teams are not able to come and many partners are not able to meet their normal pledge. With the COVID-19 Special Offering, WHPC has an opportunity to go above and beyond our ordinary commitment and help out.
Students and teachers at Eden Center in early 2020. Donations to WHPC’s special offering will help the school and its community cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because of COVID-19, WHPC’s planned trip to Nicaragua was not able to take place this summer. When we have been able to go, we have gone to serve and be a blessing, but more often than not, we are the recipients of the blessing.
What we have experienced here in the United States is very real. What our dear friends in Nicaragua are experiencing is just as real. Please consider helping as we take this journey together.
Click here to give to the Special Offering for COVID-19 Relief today.
50% of donations will benefit our partners in Nicaragua; the other half will stay in Central Texas.
Contact Nancy if you would like to learn more about WHPC’s Nicaragua partnerships.
