Amigos Bring Hope And Help To Nicaragua’s Poor

PRISCILLA GREEAR, Staff Writer

Published: October 28, 2004

BUFORD—Gladys Rivas sat in an office of the Amigos for Christ nonprofit organization that was wallpapered with photos, letters and drawings from Nicaraguan children. She smiled as she pointed to the “cuarto matrimonial” (master bedroom) on a computer drawing of her future home. Amigos’ latest project is building homes and a school in the new Santa Catalina community for her and others who had been living in squalid shacks of metal and plastic scraps by the city trash dump in Chinandega, Nicaragua.

“For the first time in my life I’m going to have a house. I want it so much. What we need most is ‘estabilidad,’ for our house to have plants, flowers, (a garden) to grow food,” said Rivas, 34. “I’m very excited. Here is the children’s bedroom. Here is the master bedroom, living room, dining room.”

The three-room home with an attached kitchen will be a treasured gift for this petite and strong-spirited Nicaraguan who grew up in a one-room house. She, her husband and their four children had been living in a dark one-room shack in El Limonal by the dump, sewage plant, a cemetery and a contaminated river. After Hurricane Mitch flooded the country in 1998 the government moved her and hundreds of displaced families there. Many rummaged through the dump daily for food and survival items. As community members struggled to breathe with the constant stench and smoke from the burning trash, it was Rivas’ prayers to God and the Virgin and her hope to give her children a better life that sustained her as she struggled to raise her family selling perfumes, bras and cigars for a paltry profit.

When the first 300 families moved out of El Limonal in 2001 to the Santa Matilde community she stayed behind, fearing life wouldn’t be better than the rent-free shacks, and waited to see if those who left had found decent living conditions. It was in the depths of that pain that she grew in faith and found her mission to lead about 120 other families, as mayor of her community, to their new homes at Villa Catalina; this past May they were moved into temporary “champas” (shelters) on the site. Now they are all working with Amigos for Christ to build their permanent homes, feeding center and school and tend to their crops planted in June on their promised land of Villa Catalina on 54 acres outside of Chinandega.

“I have to be the first to be working … the project of Santa Catalina is God’s project. We are able to rejoice in a dream coming true,” she said. “The faith has joined us in Villa Catalina. Now that we are in Villa Catalina our faith is even greater because we know when we ask with a lot of hope and perseverance that things will work out well. In spite of all things you have to suffer we still have to be strong.”

Her dream as a youth was to study nursing, but she was unable to finish high school in Honduras where her family moved for two years during the civil war. But now her dream is to help Amigos to establish this community, and to see the children receive an education.

Rivas spoke in September about her work on her first trip to the United States. She had just arrived in Georgia a few days earlier and was experiencing the awe of the wealth of middle class America and overcoming the fright from her first plane flight. She and Amigos Nicaragua operations director Lester Salinas, an engineer, traveled around the Atlanta Archdiocese with John Bland, Amigos executive director, Patty Perez, director of outreach, and other supporters Sept. 11-26 to raise money and support for Amigos’ latest project, offering area Catholics and Protestants a tangible way to address the overwhelming global crisis of poverty and transform the lives of the destitute poor next door in Central America. The trip culminated with the first Outback Fiesta fund-raiser on Sept. 25 on the Rock Springs Farm in Buford, which drew around 1,200 people, where youth gave tours of a model of the homes Amigos will construct. Those gathered for the event plucked price tags off a “giving tree” with money amounts or items they planned to donate.

“The Outback Fiesta was the best event we have ever had. The spirit of the entire day was awesome. God was present everywhere,” Bland said.

The Amigos organization has become a hot mission ticket in the Atlanta Archdiocese, with many schools and churches becoming involved. This year they led over 430 people on 15 mission trips. Other projects at Villa Catalina included drilling a water well and installing a pump and planting foods including yucca, corn, squash, cucumbers and beans. The community voted to erect a temporary school before the permanent homes in order to get the kids into the classroom—some for the first time—and the school already has four teachers for three grades plus another for older kids catching up. They built a temporary feeding center and community members are dishing out hot lunch meals like rice, beans, eggs and tortillas for the children and elderly, with leftover food going to a new community business cooperative, a collection and distribution point for goods to be sold outside the community.

“The biggest problem is unemployment, and we want to do everything we can to generate as much employment as we can. We’re learning,” Bland said.

In all, their programs in Nicaragua cost over $7,000 a month to operate and include two schools, three feeding centers, a medical program that reaches 15 rural communities and a water drilling program that has provided over 30 new wells with many more in the works.

Families assisted by trained builders will build the three-room, 500-square-foot permanent homes, which will be made of cement blocks and include an attached kitchen, a latrine and garden. Each home will cost about $3,000. Currently they are laying the roof on the permanent feeding center, and walls are going up for the permanent school, with all work being done by the community. Other aspects of phase one involve constructing a chicken house for 1,000 chickens to provide food and income generating resources and a water distribution system with a 10,000-gallon tank and distribution pipes. They are now installing electricity in the new well to get a bigger pump for the tank, a project being funded by Sugarloaf United Methodist Church. Phase two includes planting fruit trees and vegetable gardens, while phase three includes building a high school, health post, church and cooperative building.

Bland said they have learned to be more efficient in distribution of donations and is pleased with work accomplished this year. Overhead costs remain under 3 percent.

“It’s going great. Where we’re at is where we want to be. We’re building what the community wanted to build first. We’re building the school and feeding center and our costs are very low for what we’re doing because Lester is doing all the designs and engineering work” and they don’t have to contract out, he said.

“This community is more united and works harder than any we’ve ever worked with in Nicaragua, much more, and that’s a tribute to (Gladys and Lester).”

Their biggest need now is for funds for the houses and for the water system to distribute water to various posts.

“Nicaraguans don’t drink enough water. Lester’s father died of kidney problems. To do construction work you need a lot of water,” Bland continued. “Our dream is to have a shower hose at each house and to grow crops at each house year round.”

Salinas said all the villagers are contributing to the projects. On the medical front, he reported that the San Martin de Porres Hospital Amigos helped build is doing well; between February and April, 160 surgeries were performed and their dialysis clinic opened in July, with five patients going regularly. They also recently sent down a team of general surgeons in September and another team of orthopedic surgeons in October.

Amigos began as an outgrowth of a 1999 youth mission trip to Nicaragua by Prince of Peace Church in Buford. Amigos works in partnership with the Chinandega Foundation in Nicaragua run by an Italian missionary, Father Marco Dessy. In the Santa Matilde community, where they first moved families from the dump, residents now have three-room homes, lush vegetable gardens, chicken coops and latrines, a health clinic and a school, with plans to start a library.

The fiesta, sponsored by Outback Steakhouse, was held on a warm and clear late summer day and featured artisans selling items including hand-carved wood Nicaraguan crafts and ceramic clay pieces by Bland’s wife, Sabrina. Music was provided by groups including Cottnfish, Banks & Shane, Chris’ Acoustical Chaos, Chip Houston, The Lemon Cigarette, Semolina Pilchard Band and Latin D.J. Claudio Di Pietro.

It was a tranquil setting, near a large pond on which a white duck leisurely floated. Many attending the event wore stickers reading, “I helped build Villa Catalina.” They chatted and shared stories with mission trip friends, and took a shot at their favorite priest in the dunk tank. One long-term volunteer Debbie Thompson, who worked for 20 years for the Salvation Army, drove all the way from Wisconsin. She helped this year with projects in education and health care, including AIDS, pregnancy prevention and personal hygiene.

“I just fell in love with the quality of work they do, the kind of people they are, mission trips that come down.”

Ashley Newman, 14, was one of the youth giving tours of the model house, complete with a wash board and grill outside and a goat tied to a fence. Inside in one of the bedrooms was a cot and chair with a teddy bear and “El Cuento de Ferdinando” children’s book. Newman explained that “children take buckets and fill them with water because they have no running water or electricity.”

She pointed to a picture of one little shirtless girl who looked haggard and depressed at the dump and then to another of her looking healthier at Santa Catalina.

Newman has been to Nicaragua with Amigos, with her parents and brother, and they plan to go next year. She thinks the progress made this year in Santa Catalina is “amazing.” Her trips were “a life-changing experience. I just realized how lucky I was to be living in the States and to have basics from running water and electricity and just being able to go to the store and buy food and go to school.”

The Newman family, who have also traveled to China and South Africa for mission work, helped to organize baseball and soccer teams at Santa Matilde and watched them immediately peel off banana leaves from the trees for bases and use sticks and rocks as equipment. When Newman and her brother, Weston, returned home they felt compelled to stay involved, and decided to collect sporting goods from camps, as some teams buy new uniforms every year. Her mother, Anne Marie, said they have collected $17,000 in sports uniforms and equipment for them. “The joy on the children’s faces when they receive the used uniforms and sporting goods is priceless. We thank God for allowing us to work in this ministry. It has taught my children immeasurable lessons that they could not learn in a classroom, only the classroom of life … With privilege comes responsibility.”

“We’ve just been trying to spread the word about what a wonderful experience it is and how much these people need our help and we’ll probably go again this summer,” Mrs. Newman said. “It’s been a complete blessing to watch their progress and see the people grow and become more independent … It is just so empowering to see what volunteers can do and really transform thousands of people’s lives … It helps everyone’s faith grow because it’s watching faith in action. To know other people care about them it really supports them and gives them a sense of dignity.”

Her husband, Myron, added, “Before they could only hope for survival. Now they can hope for an education for their kids and a better life, one free from disease from contaminated water and living in a garbage dump, the basic things we take for granted.”

As a small business owner, he has been very impressed with the low overhead costs. So far Amigos has provided over $14 million in aid.

Giving another tour, outreach director Perez reported that they’ve started a consignment shop for donated clothes, which in just over a month raised $1,000 for Santa Catalina. She had been working as a computer system analyst before coming last year to work for Amigos full time.

“I love it. I left my corporate job last year and said, ‘Adios. I want to work for God and Amigos.’”

Amigos is always looking for schools, parishes and individuals interested in collection drives and other service projects, Perez said.

Veteran Amigos volunteer Cindy Wiley, a former teacher, said, as she monitored the silent auction tables, that on this past summer’s trip she was delighted to see the Santa Catalina kids already in school.

“It did my heart good. I met the teachers and they’re good teachers. One teacher I met graduated from college in Managua and had taught for three years, and she invited me to her house. It’s moving. I was real tickled.”

Gloria Whidby, youth minister at Prince of Peace, is another core volunteer who has taken her teens down every spring break for the past seven years. She commented on the remarkable progress, but also on the urgency of the need for sources in income and food, as they no longer have the dump to dig through.

“Sometimes I don’t know how they do it. Even though the children get milk and lunch at school in the cafeteria, there are still families who go two days without eating. For some they just have coffee and a little bread.”

Rivas, sitting in a shady spot by Whidby, said they also want to eventually start a credit union, and are also eager to establish the chicken coop. She believes more opportunities will come through her trip. At first she had feared the trip wouldn’t turn out as they planned, but kept her faith that “this was God’s will, not mine, and I knew I had to be strong.”

It was difficult to ask groups for help, but her friend Whidby reminded her that “God says we have to ask in faith” and in truth. She’s shared the message that “we lose so much time in material things that we always forget the most important things, to give our time to God.”

An Amigos missionary once told her that she was very strong and that she had to carry on, and that they would go back to the United States and become witnesses to their needs.

“That woman helped me to see that when you desire something you fight for it with all your strength and as things come to pass nothing can stop you. Nobody has detained me because God has given me the strength—because look where I am. That same wind and wave brought me a long way.”

By the end of her dream-like trip Rivas was eager to get home to her community and share stories of life “al Norte.” And she returns with gratitude for her amigos in Georgia.

“Amigos for Christ are the workers for God, serving the needs of the hungry, the naked, those who lack faith, and those who can’t even love. When you begin to serve, you know that God exists.”

For information on Amigos’ upcoming events and volunteer opportunities call (770) 614-9250 or visit www.amigosforchrist.org.