Vampire Bats Cannot Drain Hope

A letter from Justin Sundberg serving in Nicaragua

November 2015

CEPAD is. . . .
A Nicaraguan Christian development organization with a decades-long history of success in community empowerment, agricultural advancement, pastoral training and spiritual transformation.
It greatly values and depends on facilitating partnerships between U.S. churches and its rural Nicaraguan communities.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair,” writes Paul.  Renée and I have straddled this divide in new ways recently.  And so have most Nicaraguans, but for a different reason.  At a recent Monday morning CEPAD staff meeting, I listened to our regional managers give quarterly updates.  I would like to share some of their stories with you.

Hard News
Eduardo Jérez, the manager closest to where we live, gave these grim facts about the plight of Nicaraguans near us:

• 95 percent unemployment
• Drought-forced selling “of everything and at low prices”
• Food reserve gone
• Seeds reserved for planting, consumed
• Rivers drying up
• Government-sprayed insecticide unable to slow a new dengue-like epidemic

Another CEPAD regional manager talked about vampire bats beginning to bite people!

With all this awful news, I could only shake my head in wonder.  With so much wealth in our world, even in Nicaragua, and with sufficient technical capacity to feed our whole planet, there are yet huge hurdles to loving our neighbor well.

Hopeful News
Eduardo ended his update with a semi-serious attempt to be hopeful about something:  the free meal given at schools is still in place, so school attendance has risen!

Our five other regional managers, although also sober about their work updates, included multiple reasons for hope.  Regarding the vampire bats, for example, it was CEPAD-trained leaders who successfully lobbied the health ministry for action.  And in other communities potable water has arrived and health centers have been built. This has been accomplished in the first 10 months of CEPAD’s 5-year cycle.

CEPAD International Encounter 2015

Toward the end of the staff meeting I was a little dizzy from the despairing and hopeful realities of life here. But in the week following I did not have time to think more about the bleak current state of Nicaragua or the game changers like clean water and access to basic health care for some of our communities. Instead, I launched into the final days of preparation for CEPAD’s biennial meeting of U.S. church and Nicaraguan community partners called “The International Encounter,” bringing together 60 people, 30 from U.S. churches and 30 from CEPAD communities.

Love Magnified
I left the weeklong encounter deeply satisfied and grateful. Pastors from California met with leaders from a rural cooperative on the outskirts of León where most people, even young adults, suffer from kidney problems related to proximity to a huge sugarcane industry. This California/León partnership worked hard together. They are advancing viable solutions to life-ending kidney ailments, ones that will possibly benefit all of Nicaragua.  And they are opening grocery stores, which will increase employment and decrease trips to the city for food.  The California/León team spoke freely about their dreams and I could see how God is present in their shared work and relationship.

There is One Who Anchors You
We are close enough to our years in Washington state (and even New Jersey and Minnesota) that we recall the chill of a cold winter’s day.  Cocoa and hot tea.  Then the promise of spring.  God is anxious to be called upon by each of us to bring warmth into our bodies and souls, to renew all that has gone dormant. May you call out and sense that you are known, that God hears you and that God deeply loves you. And may the year to come be marked by gratitude and a sense that God can make all things new for you.

We love the hymn that proclaims, “Through the high and stormy gales, our anchor holds within the veil.” We pray that you may not be undone by the stormy winds of life. And that you may know the beloved “Anchor” who holds you firmly.

We need
your help . . .
“We need your help in reaching our yearly fundraising goal. You can make a gift at TogetherInNicaragua.  A recurring gift is particularly helpful to us to reach full funding of our position.  Gracias!”

A Word About the Sundbergs
Yesterday I heard the sound of a plane fly over our house.  It was the first plane I have heard or seen in our 17 months of living here, outside of the airport.  For a moment it made me nostalgic for Seattle and the conveniences of the North, but that feeling faded almost as quickly as the airplane went out of view.  Even with various hardships, we feel called to this place.  Your affirmation and partnership is a significant part of this.
I am growing as a dad, as a spouse, and as a development practitioner in ways perhaps not possible in Seattle.  Renée and I are using gifts and our vocational experiences in unexpected and exciting ways.  For example, Renée recently presided at the Lord’s Supper at an expat church here, the first woman to do so. I have been asked to help raise funds for CEPAD, doubling the fun I have as we continue to help raise our own support.  Our children spend a lot of time together and are being given the gift of growing in deep friendship with each other.  Their hearts and minds, formed in Seattle, are being shaped by Nicaraguan friends and families.

The Sundberg family—thank you for walking with us on this journey!

We sense your prayers for us and for the work of CEPAD, especially when you arrive on teams to experience mission here firsthand!   Thank you for taking the time to say “hello”—your care for us and the people of Nicaragua keeps us going some days!  And thank you for the financial giving that many of you have shared in support of our work with Presbyterian World Mission.

We hope that you’ll receive Nicaragua into your heart more and more as you journey with us.    If you have some year-end giving to do, we need your help in reaching our yearly goal. The link to do so is at TogetherInNicaragua.  It allows for easy set-up of recurring gifts, which is particularly helpful to us to reach full funding of our position. Your prayers and gifts make you a part of the Spirit’s work here.

Your partnership helps create a path of empowerment of Nicaraguan communities.  Additionally, individuals and churches from the U.S. have returned home recently and been inspired to start fair trade sales, write poetry, and begin or renew faith commitments. You have helped with so much!

With gratitude and warm thoughts of you in this special season,
Renée, Justin, Autumn, Jack, Cassie and Ethan

The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 65