By Bob Trolese

Verbo Nicaragua Director

We Christians bear a special responsibility as we step into the final year of the millennium. The most significant question is not how we'll open the 21st chapter of Christianity, but how we will be remembered as we close a thousand years of church history.

I believe that our Father would prefer a statement of commitment and sacrifice befitting the Lordship of His Son rather than a continuation of the excesses of personal pleasure that have stained the Christian witness lately.

I feel that we are coming to some important personal decisions concerning the nature of our Christian life. We all have the potential to make a unique contribution to the witness of Christ before our sad and dying world. Now is the time for conclusions and convictions, not for mere New Year resolutions.

Let me explain: Hurricane Mitch has been a personal odyssey for me. The refugee camps, the disaster sites, the testimonies of the victims, and the leading of the Lord have all knocked the spiritual wind out of my sails. I've tried to examine my ministry and life in Christ over these 25 years since I became a Christian. I had high hopes as a young man working on a 1500-home housing project for earthquake victims in Guatemala. Then, after it was completed, I saw the project turn into a just another slum.

I've enjoyed some major accomplishments as I’ve ministered in prisons, hospitals, parks, homes, street corners, and market places; as I’ve spoken in small churches, to large congregations, in conferences; and as I’ve counseled people and shared God’s Word for decades. I’ve also endured some massive failures.

Many times I’ve wondered, "How does one know, in the initial phases of these works, ‘Is this from God?’"

Now Mitch blows in. After all the pondering, all I come up with is "You could miss it Bob! Your choice." My only conclusion is, "I don't want to miss it.”

If all things under heaven and upon the earth are subject to God’s control and will, then all natural

Lord, is quite high. The death and sorrow Hurricane Mitch left in its wake is providing an exceedingly narrow door for the Gospel to enter into the lives of many people. The relief and development efforts are simply vehicles by which we can better express the fullness of God's love.

Two scriptures keep returning to the forefront of my thinking: "Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel!" and “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

The sanctity of the Mitch situation is that our hearts have opened through grief and upheaval. As the Lord provides us with the means to meet the victims’ physical needs, we must accompany the effort with the balsam of God’s truth. Otherwise, we will become what is known among international disaster relief agencies as the "crisis jockeys": Those who ride in, shoot off some bullets of compassion and mercy, and ride off to the next emergency.

Even so, every need we meet must be divorced from the acceptance of the Gospel. Jesus fed the five thousand, but not as payment for listening. He did it out of the mercy of his heart. So it is with medicines and building materials. We're not purchasing anyone's allegiance, but neither are we shirking our responsibility to present—as clearly as possible—the reason why Christ’s death is God's solution for man’s fallen, sinful condition.
With that in mind, here are some possibilities for further Hurricane Mitch relief work: It appears we will be able to install a water system for the 450 families at the back end of Managua's major refugee camp, Nueva Vida. We also may be able to purchase 15 acres of adjacent land to begin an experimental agricultural project that would to provide employment for the refugees. Unemployment is now running around 90%.

Children are a major concern. We just admitted three malnourished refugee children and their mother to our Casa Bernabe orphanage. In all the regions in which we’ll be working, we plan to give primary attention to infants and nursing mothers.

In Posoltega, where the Casitas volcano flood created a mudslide that covered six villages and destroyed the crops of many more, we are working to relocate the survivors of at least one of these villages and to develop an agricultural program

We’re drawing up housing and development projects for some small rural communities around Ciudad Dario and Las Maderas in the central mountain range of Nicaragua We've sent numerous medical teams into that area, and are finding extremely sub-standard (even for the Third World) living conditions. The massive development taking place in Managua is absolutely unknown in the rural areas. Medical and social services aren’t reaching the countryside. In these towns, literacy, nutrition, crop introduction, adequate housing—even transportation—are necessary to help
free the children from abject poverty. But in all we do, touching the people with Christ’s love is the priority.

On December 24, after our group finished distributing packages of food in one of the mountain communities, a deacon from the Verbo Church in Managua preached the Gospel. Many accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Vision…the child of Hope…is the most powerful force given to men. If we can teach people to rely upon the Author of every good and creative thought born in the hearts of men, total transformation is feasible.