As someone that has been on a fair amount of short term mission trips let me tell you how the Nicaragua Bible Institute is different from other short term mission trips. (I am not knocking other short term mission trips...just pointing out something that makes this one different)
Even though we are only in Nicaragua for one week, we are going to be able to build some long term relationships because we have committed to come back twice a year for the next five years. We are really earning the trust of the locals by continually investing in the same place. Just last week I got an email from the pastors in Rivas saying that they were very excited that we were keeping our word (from my scouting trip in October) by coming this March.
Another difference is that we are not coming in as the "missionaries", but as brothers and sisters in Christ to serve the Nicaraguan church. We are not there to evangelize the country... not that we are going to shy from the gospel, but the Nicaraguan believers are more than capable of sharing Christ in their country. It is our desire to equip them to minister to their own countrymen. We happen to have been blessed with an above average amount of Biblical training and want to share our blessings with them. How cool would it be if one of these pastors caught a vision for taking the gospel to the rest of the world and ended up as missionary to some country that as a white American I can't get to like the Arab world?
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