6 Month Report

Greetings from Nicaragua:

In my first 6 months serving here, I have stayed busy in many areas of ministry. I have devoted most of my time to serving the youth. I also support sports and activities for the community in Candelaria. I am overseeing Sunday school classes and the sponsorship program to keep kids in school. I am keeping myself available to assist New Song Mission Nicaragua with accounting, short term mission groups, video updates, and anything else I can help them with.

We have hosted Friday Night Youth Group in Candelaria twenty times now and this is the event
I put most of my time, energy, and support into. We started the event the first week I returned in February with just under one hundred young adults from ages 15-25 present. Of these, maybe twenty are Christians, but we are excited at the large number curious enough to always come back. We bring three communities together and enjoy two and a half hours of fellowship and fun. From around 6PM-7PM we have dance, games, and contests. Then we spend about 15 minutes watching videos of the week past and 20 minutes in praise in worship. Tommy, myself, or someone on a short term mission trip will share a Christian message and challenge our young adults to make the right decisions and build their character in ways pleasing to God. We close the service by having them circle in small groups to share testimonies and pray while we distribute soft drinks and snacks. For the past month, our numbers are closer to one hundred and fifty young adults with a lot of recent new believers. More of them are publicly professing their faith and eager to share a drama, dance, song, or testimony in the service. We have given them an open invitation to be more active in the service and we are seeing it evolve in the past couple weeks. I am in charge of this event: from setting the schedule, to making the first hour of fun and videos good enough to bring them back and new people coming, to running PowerPoint through worship, to getting people to share messages, and covering weekly costs of transportation and refreshments. I have great help in this event from God, Tommy, Linda, Scarleth and Oscar, with Daniel leading worship and know I could not take it on without them. We are seeing results, but have a long way to go, with more non-believers present each week. I believe this is why God has me here. It was the number one calling I heard when leaving in January, and is still the loudest voice I hear when He directs my mission. At least twenty youth, who in the past only came to church for Friday nights, are getting more involved in Saturday and Sunday services as well as bible studies and drama or sport teams in the past month.

As part of my outreach to get more children involved in Sunday School and young adults in youth group I support sports and activities in the community. New Song has a great piece of land available to the community and they keep it open to anyone, not just church members. Every day the land is filled with Christians and non-believers passing time on the courts or in the fields. Most of the competition and playing is unorganized but I have helped start a kickball team and kept a baseball team together by supporting a coach/trainer on monthly salary. I want to get volleyball, soccer, and basketball teams organized when time and support allow. We have a drama/dance team that practices with coaches on the weekends and I am looking to help them as well. By offering such activities, it builds relationships and raises interest in the people to get involved with other church events.

To assist with Sunday school I am currently helping the teachers by supplying attendance sheets and photocopies of curriculum materials. We support Sunday school classes in full in Candelaria with outreaches to four other communities. In Candelaria, there are five classes ranging from ages 3-20 with 150-200 children present weekly. I help these teachers with cost of some materials for crafts and photocopy bible stories and worksheets for each month’s curriculum. In the other outreaches, I am working to get teachers in place and divide children by age because right now they just meet as one class with children 3-20. La Isla/Guanacastal has around 40 children and there are about 60 in Quitanka. Nuevo Amanecer has over 70 and Santa Matilde brings around 100 a week. I keep up with attendance for all of these communities to help learn the names of the kids and to try and divide classes by age in the future. Candelaria’s Sunday school has become very well organized and with time I hope to model the others more like it.
Keeping up with Sunday school and learning about each kid also helps me with the Adopt-a-Family program that New Song has begun. For children active in Sunday school and good attendance in classes we are working to get those in school land keep them in school. Schools are public, and require only a little bit of money towards cost of uniforms and school material, but in these communities, most families cannot even afford these small costs. I am working to get the children/youth with the most service to the church and highest needs sponsored by families in America so that they can get an education. I am working to gather more information for each family to post online and hoping to have every family adopted/sponsored. Once linked with an American family, I stay busy keeping Nicaraguan and American families in touch communicating letters and reports.

Along with the four major projects I have listed above I use any other time I find serving Tommy, Linda, and New Song Mission Nicaragua with whatever needs come up. I often help Oscar with accounting and teaching him to run the computer software. When the groups come from the states on short term mission trips, I do my best to help them with their goals while trying to keep Tommy and Linda free to keep New Song running close to its schedule. When Linda gets time to send her updates of their mission projects back and wants a video or pictures to assist the report I get those made and online or put on DVD. There are many other things we do our best to tackle, when they come up as planning here can only get you so far. Staying flexible is extremely important and making decisions on the fly is daily practice.
The best things happening here recently that I want to praise God for are the young people who have decided to be baptized. Two girls were baptized about 2 weeks ago and this coming weekend we will have 3 guys and 5 more girls baptized. I am enjoying the personal friendships that I am making and helping with the sporting events, etc. but it is far more rewarding to see these people starting relationships with Jesus.

My short term future plans include taking Spanish classes and a 7-10 day return to the states. I am desperate to learn Spanish better and improve my communication with people here. I can understand and read Spanish decently, but I need to expand my vocabulary and work on speaking the language. I am hoping to start classes next week. I will be back in the states in 10 weeks to see two home football games at Appalachian, visit with friends and family, and work to raise more support for future goals.

I want to say thank you to everyone’s interest in my work here. I am building some great relationships and seeing some awesome changes here as God works in me and through me. I love and miss you all, and want to extend a special thank you to all who have supported me in prayer and finances. Although I may be far away in distance, I still feel your love and encouragement each day. I am anxious to see you when I am home the last week of October. I only see that visit lasting about a week as I have no plans of finishing what God has put in front of me here soon. Thanks again for your support through prayer and an extended thank you to those of you who have supported me financially.

In Christ,
Jim Bob “Diego” Norman
John 15:13

Heading for Costa Rica

Our season for groups has come to an end and what a great 6 months it has been! Our most recent group from IHBC of Charlotte, NC was 2 weeks with about 20 people serving in many ways in Santa Matilde. They fed children and families, repaired and built houses, had medical and dental clinics, held Baptisms, did manicures and pedicures, along with many other activities for children and families.

They left this past Friday morning and Linda actually got a flight with them to Texas to spend some time with her daughter, Trisha. The only other group we have is 5 girls with World Race who are spending the rest of August in the dental clinic out in Candelaria and helping us in so many ways. They are building relationships and hosting a bible study two mornings a week mostly for the youth. They are very independent and a true blessing to us for the month.

I am leaving Leon for Costa Rica early tomorrow morning because my 90 days are currently up and I need to border cross. I think that I am only going to stay for a night or 2 and return to keep things going with our growing youth group and catch-up things I have not had time for with all the back to back groups. I do plan to visit Costa Rica another time, as well as the other Central American countries for more extended time, but for the next couple days I think I will only be traveling just south of the border, to Liberia at furtherest.