Jenn and Scott arrived in Granada, Nicaragua on December 30, 2012, just in time to celebrate the new year and a new life serving the Lord by serving the people of Granada. Our two youngest daughters, Hannah and Journey are here as well, finishing up their high school education through Liberty Online, a wonderful online home school program. We have left Jordan and Joshua in the US as they are both going to college.
We have joined Charles and Sarah Kaye, who have been in Granada for over 6 years running the mission base El Puente. There is now a team of over 15 full time people here. While El Puente has been serving the people of several neighborhoods on the Northeast side of Granada, our new missionfield is on the Southwest side of Granada in a neighborhhod called Pantanal. This neighborhood has no secondary school, and that is what has initially brought us here. We have purchased 50 acres of land on which we will build a Christian school. However, in addition to that, we plan on many other facets of community development. We will have a sports ministry, a health and health education ministry as well as a trade school and much else eventually as The Lord provides. Our hope is great for this area and we look for the Lord to guide us in His work.
It was a long process to get here. It started over 15 years ago when the Lord placed a desire in our hearts to serve in this capacity one day. There was no timeline, and there was no clear destination, just a simple desire. Fast forward to 2007. The Lord placed it on our hearts to sell our house and prepare for missions. We sold it in 60 days.
With exitement and anticipation, we moved into a small apartment, sure that he Lord would have us packiing our bags shortly. But the call did not come right away. Finally, in November, 2010, the Lord finally told us that it was time to move on. It was time to do missions. The only problem at this point was that Jennifer had been suffering from seizures since April 2007. Back then, we thought they would go away in 6 months or a year. By November 2010, it had been over 3 and a half years, with some pretty terrible side effects and other problems that emerged. Our prayer was that if the Lord wanted us to go, he had to heal her as we could not go with Jenn in her current condition.
When the Lord completely healed her in April 2011, we knew we were on our way this time. This started the long process of preparing. Do you remember when you wanted to have your first child? It was never the right time. You always wanted to wait. Wait until you had a good job. Wait until you bought a house. Wait until you paid off some debt. Wait until you finished a project. Wait, wait, wait. But there never is a perfect time. You just have to do it. Well we kept preparing and praying. Praying and preparing. We had not raised any financial support yet, and the number was overwhelming. That is when Jenn's faith pushed us forward and totally knocked me out of our comfort zone.
In March 2012, with practically no support raised, we took a leap of faith, picked a date in September to leave, cancelled our lease, and began the push forward. So that is what we did. We moved out of our apartment on August 31, we went to missionary training at CIT in North Carolina for 4 weeks in September, and then we studied Spanish for 10 weeks in Antigua, Guatemala. Finally, on December 30, 2012, we left Guatemala and landed in Granada.
This is the beginning of something special. We know that the Lord will be working some incredible things in us while He works some incredible things through us. We have learned to take a LEAP of faith. Now we need to learn how to live a LIFE of faith, each and every day, relying on him to sustain us and give us strength.
We invite you to join us on our journey. Hopefully he can work in you as you follow along with us. You can sign up for our blog here, and you can notify me if you want to receive our monthly newsletter. We would always love to hear from you as well. We pray that the Lord draws us closer to him. We pray that we are instruments for his work, to not only impact the lives of those here in Granada, but to feed into your lives as well by sharing our experiences and the incredible work that He does in men's hearts.
God bless you all.
Scott and Jenn
