David and Mike By Lake Nicaragua

Greetings in the Name of Christ our King,

David recently returned from Nicaragua after doing workshops with Pastor Mike Dennis who is a former missionary and the pastor of Canton First Church of the Nazarene. Through the generosity of Pastor Mike and his church, Pastor Mike gave a week of his busy schedule to travel to three of the four districts of Nicaragua with David during September 21-27.

Pastor Mike did training in the mornings in how to prepare sermons and in the afternoon David gave workshops on church planting. They did four days of trainings in the cities of Rivas, Managua, Boaco and Estelí with an overall attendance of over 170 people. They praised God as 54 people signed up to plant new cell groups with the hope that each new cell group will become a new mission. Mike did an excellent job and although his voice started to give out on our last day, God gave him enough to make it through the week. David was so appreciative for the opportunity to know Mike and to travel with him all week.

The District Superintendent of Nicaragua Central with 9 new cell group planters

This was also special as Mike is a former pastor of the Woodlawn Church of the Nazarene in Woodlawn, TN where we have our membership. Yeah Woodlawn!

We are so thankful to all who prayed for this event. God blessed in so many ways. Since we were not able to fly out to the South east district of Nicaragua (the airport was closed--but thats
another story), we improvised by doing workshops in the city of Boaco (about an hour east of Managua). This city is known as La Ciudad de Dos Pisos (the City of Two Floors) because it is all hills (our church is on the second floor!). We only have two churches in this area, but one of these has over 300 members. With less than one weeks notice, we had over 20 people in attendance at the workshop in Boaco and of these 20, 14 signed up to start new cell groups.

The view of Boaco from the church

We give thanks to God for how he arranged this time. Through private donations, each new cell group leader receives Bibles, discipleship materials and evangecubes for this new work.
140 manuals were given to various churches that want to replicate the training on sermon preparation. God is continually raising up new pastors and leaders!

Please pray for God’s continued blessing on these new cell groups and that His kingdom will be expanded through these hard working folks. Thanks so much for all your prayers as God continues to bless us with traveling mercies, language, and, most of all, for sending workers into His harvest field.

Love in Christ,

David, Shelley, Joshua and Kayley