News > Latin America

Nicaragua UBF

April 19, 2013

Nicaragua is located in Central America between Honduras and Costa Rica. Right now, it is the hot, dry season. 17 years ago, M. Juan and Rebecca Kim went to Guatemala and pioneered together with Josue and Ana Ham’s family for 10 years.  They raised Karina who established a house church with Dimas, as the Abraham and Sarah of faith in Guatemala. 7 years ago, M. Juan and Rebecca went out to pioneer Nicaragua.

When they first went to Nicaragua, they began their self-supporting ministry by selling small goods in the flea market in front of the campus. Now, God has blessed Juan Kim to be a manager of one Korean and Nicaraguan electronic trading company. God has also blessed Rebecca Kim to become a professor of the National University of Nicaragua, teaching the Korean language for the last one year.  Four of her Korean class students all came for the conference. Recently, God blessed them to buy a spacious Bible house where they found 5 bombs and 3 big guns, and a big Boa snake came out as they were remodeling it. God also blessed them to buy their own house close to the Bible house.

Nicaragua UBF began with a few single moms like Yasris and Sandra. Yasris is 26 years old with a 9-year-old daughter, Iris.  Sandra is 38 with a 13-year-old son, Leo. There are a lot of single moms in NUBF and Nicaragua. This shows Nicaragua’s spiritual condition. Jonathan and Mariano are all leading shepherds of NUBF.  However, they are all scared to establish house churches because their fathers all ran away from them when they were very young like most Nicaraguan students. I was surprised to see Nicaraguan students are all beautiful and handsome looking. Nevertheless, they are all very skinny and very poor. Milton, who is Jonathan’s Bible student, a very pure and sincere looking boy, said that 20 students are sleeping in his tiny two room dormitory because they have no place to sleep.  He himself lives on $10 a month and often drinks a lot of water to fill his stomach. That’s why many Christian churches and organizations buy houses and invite students to live there to help them to come to church.

I was moved to see Juan and Rebecca Kim’s deep compassionate shepherd heart for all Nicaraguan students and their sacrificial serving life. Rebecca Kim said her husband Juan could not eat at home comfortably thinking of his hungry students. So I saw their constant feeding and serving students as one house church on so many occasions. But Juan Kim plants gospel faith in all students through diligent Bible teaching. He teaches them to offer the tithe in spite of their poverty. He trains them to be raised as shepherds. I saw Jonathan and Mariano began to be called shepherds right after this EBC because their sheep Milton and Asher all came and were raised as wonderful messengers.

I was moved to see that most of the 35 conference attendants were very young students. The conference was held from March 27-31. The title of the EBC was “Hoy ha llegado la salvacion” which means “Today salvation has come” (Luke 19:9a). The main messengers were Sandra, Asher, Jonathan, Yasris, Mariano, Maira, Fadia, Juan and Rebeca, all 9 shepherds. Life Testimony speakers were Kenia, Milton, Indira, Carin, Lijia, Eric, Joyslyn, Sylvia, and Marlene, 9 students. I saw that their GBS and writing and sharing testimony in each group was very sincere. In my HBF group I served 4 pre-teen students in English, Spanish and Korean, who were all very sincere. Many new students who came to the EBC decided to study Bible 1:1 with their shepherd. Milton made a decision to receive baptism after this conference. Lijia, a very pretty but most sorrowful looking girl due to her past sinful life, made a decision to study 1:1 and learn violin and join the orchestra. Eric and Rosa who married recently in another church out of their impatience, humbly returned to UBF with repentance, served Sunday lunch after the EBC and decided to be raised as a house church.  Insook Kim, Juan and Rebecca Kim’s 15-year-old son, who had made his parents anxious by indulging in computer games endlessly, found hope in Jesus and decided to be a future missionary to America. He told me that he had begun to reduce his computer game playing time with the hope of God. I made a personal relationship with him and decided to pray for him as my prayer for this sacrificial missionary family.

Juan Kim said he would teach marriage and house church Bible study for leaders after this conference to teach them how to have a biblical family, and Nicaragua UBF prays to establish a house church this year. Nicaragua is like a great harvest field to reap. They are eagerly awaiting many short-term and long-term English speaking missionaries to come and teach them the Bible. I saw great hope for this nation to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, and a missionary sending nation since they are sending out their first missionary Fadia to Korea this May. Amen.

By M. Maria Ahn