When Annette Vickers first travelled to Nicaragua in 1996 as part of a small mission team looking for a project to support, she had no idea where the fact-finding journey would lead her. Nearly 10 years later, Vickers is active as the director of PAN—Presbyterians Aiding Nicaraguans—facilitating eight to 12 group mission trips to the Central American country each year. "I love it!" she said. "There's nothing more satisfying than seeing the fruits of your labour with your own eyes. That's why the teams like it, they get to leave something tangible behind and they bond with the people they meet."
A member of Kortright, Guelph, Ont., the retired school teacher has watched the program grow to include numerous denominations, various Canadian sponsors that donate supplies, and a steadily growing list of partners in Nicaragua who need a helping hand.
The Child Evangelism Fellowship in Nicaragua is PAN's main connection, helping to coordinate projects and suggest where help is needed. One of the first endeavours of the mission teams is to build Sunday school classrooms (which often double as daily Christian schools) and small churches. The projects cost about $10,000 US. Teams raise the funds necessary for building, and individuals pay for their own travel expenses. "God has never let us down," said Vickers. "They always wonder if they can, but every team has been able to raise the money. It's never been an issue."
Until last year, there was no Presbyterian Church in Nicaragua. Today, there are eight Korean Presbyterian Churches in the country, and PAN, a registered charity in Canada and Nicaragua, has just begun to partner with them.
Vickers accompanies the teams on their trips, along with one other board member. She figures she's been to the country, one of the poorest in the hemisphere, about 40 times. Massive unemployment, low per capita income, high external debt and one of the most unequal distributions of income on the planet plague the country, where half of the population lives below the poverty line.
Despite these setbacks, Vickers said the evangelical church is growing, with Sunday schools often filled with 150 children, even though only 20 adults are at the service.
In addition to building projects, teams visit children's hospitals, where they paint pictures with cancer patients, bring gifts and supplies for infants, and medicine for those in need. The children's paintings are brought back to Canada and sold, and the profits are used to buy more supplies. Money is also raised through PAN's hospital and emergency funds to pay for costly procedures such as CAT scans. Teams visit orphanages, where they do crafts and play games with children, child feeding centres, where they help serve and prepare food, and they recently began visiting a women's hospital. And although they don't overtly evangelize, teams often hand out Bibles along the way.
A team of eight recently went to northern Nicaragua carrying 400 packages of supplies including rice, oil, hygiene products, used clothing and shoes. The large shipment was made possible with the help of the Canadian air force who had the clothes and shoes in storage and made a humanitarian flight to the country. Such large shipments are rare because of the cost, said Vickers, but are a huge help when possible.
PAN also brought along two medical aid packages known as physician travel packs donated by Health Partners International of Canada. Each pack has enough medicine and supplies to treat up to 1,000 children. Health Partners is a Canadian medical aid agency that ships vaccines and medical supplies to developing countries.
Although the physical assistance is always appreciated, Vickers said it is the fact that people came at all that leaves the biggest impression. "Because sending teams can be expensive, people wonder why we don't just send money. But when people go there, they get excited about mission and they want to go back. You have to get people down there."
She told the story of a very poor church in Managua that a team from her congregation visited in March. The young pastor of the church was amazed by their visit. "It thrilled him to his very core that people came," said Vickers. "He was amazed that people in Canada would spend their own money just to see his little church. We need to be there and make those connections."
