Blessing the People of Nicaragua

This past July, the short-term mission team of Sarah Amadon, Iris Amadon, Kristina Demetriou, Hannah Cohen, Keith Kemmer and Roger Drost spent several weeks in Nicaragua
serving with Peace and Hope Trust and working alongside another volunteer team from Virginia.

Somehow the cattle knew it was coming and disappeared into the bush in search of higher, more sheltered ground. Most of the villagers, informed by radio of the hurricane’s impending arrival, followed suit and evacuated to the inland village of Karawala. The few who remained behind talk about a waist deep surge of water rushing through their community, razor sharp sheets of zinc being torn from roofs and whipped about and a fearful night huddled in a shaking building while praying they would see another dawn. This is how the villagers of the Mosquito Coast village of La Barra describe their experience with Hurricane Beta several years ago. With the roof and windows blown off the village school, the devastation of the surrounding rainforest and the complete destruction of the small, wooden Anglican church, the scars left by Hurricane Beta have lingered for some time in this small fishing village. However, the community also speaks of God’s grace. How thankful they were that all survived and how grateful they were when a boat full of relief supplies arrived immediately after the disaster. At that critical time, North Shore Community Baptist Church (NSCBC) provided funding for the supplies delivered to La Barra and the disaster relief effort organized and implemented by Peace and Hope Trust, the nonprofit organization under which our church serves in Nicaragua. So this past summer, additional funding from NSCBC for building materials allowed the short-term Nicaragua team to continue to assist in La Barra’s recovery by putting a roof on the community’s newly constructed Anglican church building.

How privileged our team was to share this gift from our church and how blessed we were to see the new Anglican roof materialize before our very eyes! It was late in the morning and the sun was fierce. Soggy with perspiration, our team moved smoothly and efficiently around the grassy courtyard where we were building the last few of the 11 trusses we needed for the roof. Team members carried and laid out the lumber and measured and marked the pieces. Another team member stepped in to nail the pieces together and someone else drilled holes. One nailed plates across the joints while another bolted the frame together. When we finished a truss, six men from the village came to carry it to the church construction site. Although we floundered building the first few trusses, not sure of what to do and how to do it, as we worked together each team member found his role and became more skillful with his task while depending on others to do their jobs or to help out when someone was struggling. It was a marvelous illustration of the nature of the Church of Christ with its members working together with choreographed grace, using their gifts to His glory and in His service. By the time we left La Barra, all 11 trusses stood in a neat row atop the cement block church building.

“Amazing grace” could be our team’s refrain and theme for this year’s outreach to Nicaragua. We were both recipients of His grace and blessing, as He protected us, directed us and provided for us when difficulties arose, as they often seem to in Nicaragua, and channels of His grace and blessing to others, especially to those in great need.

We saw God’s grace in our visit to the poor, isolated jungle community of Esperanza. Reeling from recent floods, this small village, which we visit every year, gratefully accepted and distributed the rice and flour we delivered while Iris Amadon, a nurse and one of our volunteers, teamed up with a village nurse to treat over 100 patients who crowded into the ramshackle community center. Meanwhile, several other team members slapped at insects and slogged through mud to bring mosquito nets and school supplies to homes in the village and to offer God’s blessing.

We saw His grace as a team of volunteers from NSCBC, Virginia and the Nicaraguan community, under the leadership of Kristina Demetriou, came together to organize a VBS for a church in the mountainous region of Matagalpa. Sarah Amadon, Hannah Cohen and Keith Kemmer provided leadership and support as 70 small children crowded into the one-room hillside church one sunny afternoon and listened to a Bible story, sang songs, had their pictures taken, made small purses to put their photos in and finished up with a raucous session of bubble blowing.

As our team built a footbridge across a swamp to the village well in La Barra and volunteers labored in the mud to build an orphanage in Matagalpa, God’s grace strengthened and sheltered us. We shared the wonder of His grace with fellow believers as we sang and spoke words of encouragement and exhortation in the village churches and prayed with Christian leaders in a small hut along the Rio Grande de Matagalpa. His grace abounded as we faced the logistical challenges of getting a dozen volunteers across the country, in and out of various ports and boats and up and down jungle rivers.

Finally, how blessed we are to have a sending church like NSCBC, administering God’s grace through prayer, guidance, and financial support. In fact, NSCBC has stood behind the work in Nicaragua and these Mosquito Coast communities for 11 years, with many individuals giving of their time and resources to further the ministry of short-term teams and Peace and Hope Trust. Hebrews 4:16 summarizes the theme of this year’s trip and encourages us to lean on Jesus and look to his grace: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Continue to pray for the needs of Peace & Hope Trust, and Nicaragua Field Director, Peter Coleman (seen above distributing rain gear to 2008 team members on their arrival to a very rainy Nicaragua). Peter resides in Managua from where he oversees all the needs and activities of P&HT, including managing and providing for teams which come each year. Also remember Paige (Pittman) Crocker who serves as US Field Director.

WINTER 2008 PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS:
--A strong team of British volunteers completed much work in Nicaragua during the late winter months (Jan-March). Placing the finishing touches on the roof is all that remains for the completion of Sixto’s house. Plans for the establishment of a Bluefield Bakery—to minister to the families living in and around the Municipal Dump—were greatly furthered by a group of committed ladies. And more than 150 children received new school uniforms, shoes and supplies!

--For two weeks during February, Dentist James Smith, aided by several assistants, treated approximately 250 patients! Children and adults arrived by the truckload for much-needed work on their teeth, benefiting from the blessing of these free clinics.



--A small team of volunteers will make their way to Nicaragua later this month to break ground on the new Eco-Lodge, located on the Coffee Farm in Matagalpa. This environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient facility will provide housing for teams, farm workers and visitors, as well as allow for
a more suitable shelter for medical clinics, VBS programs and educational outreaches.

SUMMER 2007 PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS:

--During the summer months, over 50 volunteers participated in the construction of a Rice Mill in the village of Haulover, which is home to 2,200 people on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Community leaders had been praying for a rice mill for more than 20 years and PHT was blessed to participate in providing for this need, aided by funds from a partnering organization. The mill should be in full operation by the start of the New Year.

-- In response to major flooding in coastal areas, a team from Cheyenne, Wyoming orchestrated the purchase, packaging, and delivery of 2,000 pounds of emergency relief supplies. Approximately 100 families received the packages which included rice, beans, sugar, flour, salt, oil, baking soda,
bleach, candles and matches.

-- Spanish bibles and musical recorders were distributed among students in Haulover, much to their delight. Teams also implemented Vacation Bible School programs in Bluefields and La Barra.

--Margaret Edmonds and Jerania Tores completed two months of work in Bluefields, ministering to families living on the Municipal Dump. Two homes were built for needy families, musical instruments were purchased for churches and schools, and school supplies were delivered to many children.

If there is one day Peter Kilfoyle will never forget, it is Saturday, 17 June, 2006. It was the day he suffered his second heart attack. He survived.

The sun was beating down on Liverpool and the Labour MP wanted to spend the day, a week after his 60th birthday, in his garden mowing the lawn and planting a small tree. Dressed in a scruffy pair of trousers he started to dig, but the ground was so dry and cracked in the heat his metal spade bent in half as he drove it into the soil.

'That was when it started,' said Peter last week, sitting in his tidy London flat, minutes from Westminster. 'I felt this sensation across my chest and shoulders. I would describe it not as pain but as discomfort. I felt restless.'

Peter knew he had experienced the same sensation once before, while he was driving along the M40, heading north from his Westminster office to his constituency in Walton, Liverpool. 'I just pulled over and let it pass, then carried on driving,' he said, not realising how serious it was.

This time the feeling did not abate. Eventually he decided to drive himself to a local hospital. 'I knew something was wrong but I didn't know what,' he said. 'I thought they might send me away with some paracetamol. My wife wanted to come with me but I said, "No, you don't want to hang around." That was how lightly I took it.'

It took another 15 minutes to reach the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and when he got there he had to walk up a hill to get to A&E. All the time the strange sensation that had spread across his upper body continued. It did not take long for a cardiologist to tell him that he had just suffered a heart attack - and that it was not his first. 'Just think, you are one of the lucky 50 per cent,' the doctor told him. 'Fifty per cent of people who have heart attacks do not make it this far.'

But Peter has not just survived, he has transformed his life. He knows, without any doubt, that it was his heavy drinking, smoking and eating that led to the attack and that is why he now walks four miles each day, avoids fattening food, drinks in moderation and never touches a cigarette. He has not weighed himself but his clothes are baggier now and set to become more so this week.

Yesterday, little more than a year after he suffered the heart attack, Peter set off from a tranquil Nicaraguan fishing village on a 140-mile trek across the Central American country to raise money for the British Heart Foundation and the Peace and Hope Trust, a local charity. It is a trip he would never have dreamt of before.

Peter knows how lucky he is to have had that second chance. Each year, around 230,000 people in the UK suffer a heart attack, one every two minutes, and tens of thousands never make it to hospital. Even he thought twice about going in.

Speaking the day before he flew out to Nicaragua, Peter told how, lying in hospital hours after the heart attack, the only thing that ran through his mind was what had happened to his close friend Mike Carr, who became a Labour MP, then died 57 days later.

'He was an MP for eight weeks and he died of a heart attack after being sent home from hospital,' said Peter, taking a deep breath and dropping his head. 'Mike Carr was an MP for Bootle and I'll never forget that night because they said it was angina and sent him home and then he had another heart attack, which killed him within hours.'

Instead, Peter was quickly taken for an angiogram to assess the health of the arteries surrounding his heart. 'That was the hardest thing for me personally to face, because I was completely conscious,' he said. 'They put this tube through an artery right into my body and then released a fluid that enabled them to do a scan on my heart. The results showed that I needed a quadruple bypass urgently.' Six weeks later Peter went in for his operation.

Sitting at the dining table in his flat next to a picture of his daughter, Amy, on her wedding day, Peter lifted up his arms to reveal thin red scars running across his skin. He pulled at his shirt and said: 'They saw through your breastbone, peel you open and go to work on you, a bit like being a butcher, I suppose.' When he first woke up Peter said he was 'high' to realise he was still alive and started joking with the medical staff. His surgeon, Aung Oo, later said: 'Typical politician - he wouldn't shut up.'

Peter has nothing but praise for the doctors who helped him through his rehabilitation, but not all get the same standard of care. A BHF report this summer revealed that patients faced a postcode lottery after suffering a heart attack, with three out of five failing to gain access to the rehabilitation they needed, such as an exercise programme, advice on lifestyle and counselling. Some were too nervous to get active again and others were dying prematurely, it concluded.

Not so for Peter, who was given the all clear last week for the tough trek he has now started. 'I know there are people out there who believe that, once they have a heart problem, they are an invalid for life,' he said. 'But it just isn't like that with modern surgical and rehabilitation techniques.'

During his rehabilitation, Peter and three other men talked to a cardiac nurse about lifestyle. 'I got cheesed off with these blokes whingeing about why this had happened to them,' he said. 'I told them, "I am in here because of one person - me. Nobody asked me to smoke all my life, nobody asked me to drink all my life, nobody asked me to indulge myself with fatty foods."'

Peter pointed towards the House of Commons and described his unhealthy lifestyle in what he called the 'house of fun'. Four days a week he could sit down to a rich lunch and go to two receptions in the evening, all the time smoking up to 40 cigarettes a day.

'I've been in full-time politics now for 20 years and you do spend a disproportionate amount of time sitting around, blowing off about every subject under the sun while stuffing your face with assorted pastries and downing the odd drink or two,' said Peter. 'You can extrapolate from that into business, into all sorts of professional lifestyles where people sit around, don't get enough exercise and eat and drink the wrong things. I had done no meaningful exercise since I came into full-time politics and I've smoked since I was a kid - 40 years.'

The heart attack forced him to finally give up smoking: 'If the choice is between having another heart attack, potentially fatal next time, and having a cigarette you'd have to be a total cretin not to see what the choice is. And even my worst enemies will tell you I am many things, but I am not a total cretin.'

He is also eating more healthily, passing on the lunches and receptions in Parliament and drinking in moderation. 'We are all allowed one poison and the medicinal value of mother's milk, aka Irish whiskey, far outdoes any damage,' he jokes. 'Seriously, I have spoken to doctors and I am not saying you should drink to excess, but the odd glass of red wine or whiskey does not do any harm.'

On his Central American trip, he will cover 10 to 15 miles a day for a fortnight. He will be accompanied by son Patrick, son-in-law Jon Gill, who is a nurse, and fellow MP Greg Pope.

'I am hardly going to indulge in contact sports after my chest has been all stitched up, am I?' Peter said. 'But exercise will do you the world of good.'

Those who have seen Peter sitting in Westminster bars drinking and smoking may be surprised by the transformation. 'Ricky Tomlinson is a friend of mine and he has just been told he has to have the same operation. It is amazing how many people of all age groups are getting this. I don't want to sound like a proselytiser for good health causes, but unfortunately I am because of my own experience.'

Found in the Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/stor ... 23,00.html

BAYSIDE -- A war-torn flag that flew over Omaha Beach was returned to American shores after 60 years in British care, bringing with it a remarkable story of courage and faith.

Now mounted under glass to protect it, the flag was returned officially during an emotionally charged ceremony June 6 at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.

Under bright skies and the thunder of airplanes, a crowd of veterans, military brass and several hundred spectators, including Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf and Rep. Edward Schrock, listened to the story of Douglas E. Edmonds, a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, as told by his widow, now 73.

"It is a reminder of the dark days of combat and a memorial to the many lives shattered and lost by war," said Margaret Edmonds of Hertfordshire, England.

The flag had been presented to her late husband at Omaha Beach in 1944.

"This flag also stands for the ties that bind, our nations stand together again in the face of evil, the common enemy of international terrorism," she said. "Douglas believed that the Almighty God was on the side of justice, and that good must always triumph over evil."

At 18, Douglas Edmonds was charged with leading the Royal Navy repair ship LBE38 to Gold Beach during the Normandy invasion. Left behind by the faster British convoy, he and his crew continued on alone until they spotted an American flotilla, which they joined, rather than risk a solitary landing on German-occupied beach.

They followed the Americans to Omaha Beach and provided support and repairs under heavy fire, until the beach was secured. In gratitude, the beach master presented Edmonds with an American flag that had flown there, badly damaged but still intact.

Edmonds returned to his Royal Navy duties, serving until the war's end, after which he dedicated his life to missionary work in South Africa and, later, to Nicaragua with the Peace and Hope Trust.

The flag had been kept wrapped in a drawer until Edmonds' death in 2001. It was bequeathed to Mike Cole, the founder of the international Peace and Hope Trust, a retired squadron leader from the Royal Air Force and close friend. His trust was founded in 1991 to provide educational, agricultural and social assistance to the people of Nicaragua.

Cole, who attended the ceremony with Margaret Edmonds and members of their families, said they carried the flag back to America as a memorial and to continue the cause of justice.

"Douglas used to say he went into the war resolved to serve his king, but he returned resolved to serve the King of Kings," said Cole.

"The journey isn't done," said Peter Coleman, director of the Peace and Hope Trust. "We hope that the spirit of this flag, with all that it stands for, will continue to inspire good men and women to reach out to those not reached by others."

Coleman said a new riverboat is being built for use in Nicaragua and will be named for Douglas Edmonds. The local ceremony ended with a Navy SEAL demonstration and an amphibious assault landing.

"Landing craft move a lot faster today than the 7 knots we made when I was in," said Virginia Beach resident Richard Shafanda, a veteran of World War II. "We were sitting ducks."

Shafanda said the demonstrations were fun to watch, but the transfer of the flag meant the most to him.

"That flag makes you feel proud," he said. "Proud of those who served then and proud of those who serve today."

Found in the Virginian Pilot