Nicaragua

Preaching in Nicaragua? This country has been on my radar for some time now, and for several reasons...

My company has an annual shutdown the week of July 4, which allows me to get away for a bit longer without burning all my vacation time. So, in July, I had an opportunity to visit Nicaragua and Ecuador. I want to share some highlights here.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua has been on my radar for some time now for several reasons:

• As part of “finish the mission” framing of our work, it’s an area on the map of Latin America where we haven’t consistently advertised or worked, and is a gap we need to fill in.
• As a country that has struggled politically and economically for many years, it may be more receptive to the gospel message than the countries that are more “Western” and affluent.
• Nicaragua is situated about halfway between our two strongest ecclesias in Latin America, reachable in a realistic one-day drive from El Salvador and Costa Rica.
• Over the last few years, Bro. Allen, Sis. Dana and I have been talking about possible Latin American projects for Truth Corps, and some sort of activity in Nicaragua with support from the two ecclesias near it could be a possibility—if it’s safe enough.
• In our online advertising framing of “registrants per dollar spent,” Nicaragua has one of the lowest costs of online advertising, and if we wanted to grow the number of students, it is a place we could likely economically do that.

Having said all that, the news on Nicaragua is generally grim, and while it’s a bit of a tourist destination, mostly for surfing, it’s unclear whether it would be a safe enough place to send people, especially groups of relatively “green” young people. So, the goal of the trip was to get to know the country a bit and learn what we could. I was accompanied by Bro. Jaime Mate, the current recording brother of the San Salvador Ecclesia, who I have known for many years. Bro. Jaime and Sis. Karla have also come down to help us in Ecuador a few times.

Bro. Jaime and I spent two days in Managua and two days driving east and west to the towns of Estelí and Granada. Nicaragua is a beautiful country (with a very low population density compared to El Salvador), has a solid highway system, and good roads in town. We felt completely safe everywhere we went. We used a guide for our drives out of town and had long discussions about the political and social situations. Essentially, it boils down to being a typical kleptocracy, where if you don’t speak out directly against the government, you’re probably just fine. But there was also definitely a bit of a “Cuba vibe,” where it just felt a little off, like people were just a bit on guard.

The odd thing both Bro. Jaime and I separately noticed, was the low number of churches. We couldn’t really put our finger on why it felt that way. Generally, when you drive around a Latin American city, you’ll see churches everywhere, but that wasn’t the case in Nicaragua. So, on our third day there, we used Google Maps to walk around Managua, looking at any churches near the downtown area. While they do exist (There aren’t a ton), the ones there weren’t particularly big or successful looking. I haven’t found anything online indicating that anyone else has noticed or measured that, so we would just have to see if it could be a challenge or an opportunity.

Kevin Hunter,
CBMA Link for Nicaragua