Living the Good Life — The Journey

From the Archives: Winter 2008

Written by Jim Bob Norman

During my schooling at App State, I was privileged to play football for Coach Jerry Moore. I consider him to be one of the people who greatly influenced my life at that time. His consistent Christian walk both challenged and inspired me to be bold for the Lord on campus and contributed to the building of my character.

“Leave family, friends and all that is familiar and follow Me.” My uncle, Andy, heard this call and served in Nigeria, Africa, for 15 years. My cousin, Sara Beth, heard this call and went to China. My dad, Dan, heard this call and went on short-term mission trips for a couple of weeks each year. I didn’t fully understand how they could just pack up and leave their lives behind until I heard this call.

I had gone on some short-term mission trips with my dad and had taken a trip to Mississippi and New Orleans with Campus Crusade for Christ after Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, I took a mission trip to Hawaii with my mother and brother. I graduated in December from App State and planned to return to Hawaii for a three month mission trip in February. However, in January I went to Nicaragua for a week’s mission trip with my parents and granddad. I expected to play with the kids there and help out for one week. As we were leaving and saying our farewells to the congregation, I had a strong impression I would be back. I even voiced to them I would return. On the flight home, they were all I could think about. Within 24 hours, I knew I was headed back for a minimum of three months. Three weeks later, I returned not for three months but indefinitely. I joined New Song Mission Nicaragua full-time and began working with the youth.

On short-term missions I had been somewhat limited on what I could achieve because of time restraints. We could only deal with immediate problems, but as a full-time worker I can now make plans and projects that will affect not only this generation but generations to come. Primarily, I work with young people 25 years of age or under. As a youth pastor I have to build a foundation of love, letting them know I love them and Jesus loves them. The concept of love is foreign to them. Survival they understand, but not love.

This village was built to house field workers by San Antonio Sugar Cane Plantation. Ninety percent or more of the men in the village work the cane fields for next to nothing. Pesticides in that work have affected their health and wrecked their kidneys. Men are dying at 30 and 35 years old due to renal kidney failure. The majority of the kids here are growing up without fathers. There is a hospital here, but it only serves to try to keep the men alive. It does nothing to prevent the cause of kidney failure. The choices are limited for these men. They can stay and work the cane until it kills them or abandon their families and head for Costa Rica where there are more job opportunities. Our goal is to stop this cycle. We want to show them that a loving God wants more for them than this lifestyle.

The work is always evolving and we sense God giving us new strategies to break both physical and spiritual poverty. To address their spiritual needs, we offer Bible studies and church services geared to their age group. We are teaching and living Christian values and morals before them. Our aim is to build healthy, growing communities of Christians who love God and each other.

We push education because without it they are trapped into repeating the same dead-end life their parents and grandparents endured. We want to enable them that they might find employment that will raise their standard of living. Our strategy for this is aligning them to families in the USA who will sponsor them financially, families willing to contribute to their needs of pencils and paper, notebooks, clothing and medicine. Living in unsanitary conditions, they are often ill and miss weeks of school. They get behind in their school work, become discouraged and drop out. We also enlist families able to support students we need to go on to college in order to achieve their goals and dreams.

In the nine months I have been in Nicaragua, God has allowed me to establish relationships that are life-changing, both theirs and mine. I’ve been in Boone for a week visiting family and friends, but this isn’t “home” anymore. I can’t live anywhere but there. I no longer fit into this culture and God assures me daily that I was created to serve the people of Nicaragua. My passion for them increases because I’m about the call assigned to me. I’m in the center of His will and nothing compares to that. As far as I’m concerned, I’m living the “good life”—the only life!