by Rich Morris

Created on: July 23, 2008

What I did on my summer vacation
Nicaragua Mission trip 2008

Where is Nicaragua?
My daughter wanted to go on a mission trip to Nicaragua. Since I had previously been to the Dominican Republic on two missions trips, my wife said, " your dad is going with you." I said, " no problem, I'm in." I signed up with my daughter to go even though I didn't know where Nicaragua was located. I thought it was in South America. It sounded like it should be in South America. I had trouble finding it on the globe probably because I was looking in South America. I looked it up on the computer. Nicaragua is located in Central America between Costa Rica to the South and Honduras and El Salvador to the North. It borders both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

When Pastor Carlos, Anna Rosa and Lito visited our church, my daughter was very impressed with Lito. Lito gave his testimony, and he also sang. He had been a former gang member, and he turned his life around by finding Christ. He is the youth pastor at a youth ranch that meets in Chinandega, Nicaragua. He is a man that is very well respected by everyone in his community. Lito is the reason that we went to Nicaragua. My daughter was so impressed by him that she wanted to go on the next mission trip to Nicaragua. In most cases, the parent leads and the child follows. In my case, my daughter led, and I followed. It works either way. After we signed up, we started going to meetings to prepare for our trip. I didn't know anyone in our group, but that would soon change.

The next hurdle that we had to cross was to get our funding for the trip. We needed to raise $1100.00 each. At Sharon Baptist, they have the missionaries send out letters asking for support financially and spiritually. I wasn't comfortable with this, but I did it. On my previous trips to the Dominican Republic, I just paid my own way, and I planned on doing that for this one also. Well, plans can change. In the time when we were getting prepared to go serve in Nicaragua, my wife was laid off from her job. I thought that we were going to have to cancel our trip. I didn't make any rash decisions. I just put off the inevitable which was telling my daughter that we couldn't go. To my surprise, people started sending money in for our trip. I was too proud to ask for support, but I did it because that's the way they do it at Sharon Baptist church. My daughter also was involved in fundraisers to raise money for our trip. She did babysitting. My wife and son worked at

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