El Kinal community is a very rural area towards the Pacific Coast in the Santa Teresa area of Nicaragua. They are one of the communities that was hit especially hard by the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota back in November 2020.
We were able to love on a couple of their neighboring communities, sharing food, supplies, the gospel and encouragement. El Kinal is even more rural than the others and the people are more scattered, it took a little longer to assess their needs.
Also, we had some significant trouble with the banks, so we had to keep delaying our outreach.
We were thankful to finally be able to bring help to these people and assure them God loves them.
This small community is hard to reach. Long dirt roads, crossing streams, etc. to get there. People from the community often come in with pack animals to get supplies.
We brought basic food supplies like rice, beans, oil, etc. and were able to make sure to share with all of the families who came. What an honor to help people in need. Thanks for your donations that make all of this possible!
The greatest need that ANY human has, of course, is to be in a restored relationship with the God who created us. So along with the physical supplies, we put gospel tracts in the bags. And then our field director for Nicaragua, Kevin, shared the good news from John chapter 3 where Jesus explained to Nicodemus that all of us need to be born again, and we do that by putting our trust in Jesus, the Messiah. Out of the 100 or so people, about 13 indicated they were choosing to put their trust in Jesus Christ! Three of them even specifically came up afterwards to Kevin to tell him it was the first time they had ever heard the gospel of grace. They have gone to church most of their lives, and the pastors and church leaders always told them good works were required in order to go to heaven. How wonderful to be free of that burden and have assurance of their salvation not because of THEIR good works, but because of JESUS!
Kevin is working with the local leaders to disciple these new believers and looking for ways that we might be able to help this community in a way that makes their lives better in the long run. Perhaps a community water project.
It is very easy for us to take access to safe, clean water for granted, as well as many other things like access to the Bible and good, solid, biblical, grace-filled teaching. Thanks for helping us to bring these things to people in far off places and reassure them that God has not forgotten about them and has sent US to bring them the good news and show them the love of Jesus.
