We arrived back in Bluefields at about 11 a.m. Monday and it is great to be back here where God has called us.
It is becoming very clear, as we told the churches on our visit to the US, that our most significant ministry will not be within the four walls of the churches.
Our key role will be to stand alongside of those, particularly the younger crowd, who have a desire to reach out and be Jesus to their world. We want to encourage them and help them with the work, without hindering them.
 We are exploring a really cool possibility with Ralston and his boxing coach.
Fernando has a real heart to help the young people and has been coaching on a volunteer basis for about 12 years. He drives a cab and ekes out a small income.
After our discipleship group, Ralston told me that the power had been turned off to the place where they trained. It got reallyinteresting when he told me the location - an old movie  theater.
By the way, it cost us all of $37.00 to pay the 7 months in back electric fees and get the electricity turned back on.
I have walked past this old theater a bunch of times and have tried to look inside, thinking how great it would be to use it for outreach, but we could never afford to buy it, since it is right downtown.
To cut to the chase, the building is owned by the city and is only used part time for boxing training. Fernando the coach told me hewould be happy to  have us use it for youth outreach, so our next step would be to talk to the mayor and work out something.
Does anyone know what they are doing with the old seats from Reunion Arena?
Ideally, it would be good to work out a long term agreement whereby we would maintain and upgrade the building in exchange for the right to use it for family friendly entertainment.
What a way to impact a city - 500 people at a time, day in and day out for the next 20 years!!
As a church group, we can get a license to show Christian films as well as other family friendly movies publicly as long as we do not  charge admission. We believe that we could have a far greater impact on the families of the city in this location than anything we could do within the four walls of the church.
The structure appears solid, but needs a lot of maintenance work, including a new roof.
We really need to ask God for wisdom as we consider the possibilities and see the necessary permissions and finances to move forward with this.
Continued on the next page . . . . |
