...the answer is "A LOT!".
Final update - March 2012
With over 75 people becoming followers of Christ because of God's work through the water project in Las Lajas, a brand new church has been started. During the process, the team experienced many hardships, including hospitalization of the project manager, Maynor and a 2-3 month rain that damaged supplies and trapped them in the field with the people of Las Lajas.
BUT THAT WAS ALL IN GOD'S PLAN!
Because of the delay they were able to have more time to live out their faith with the people of Las Lajas and when we say 75 people accepted Christ, we mean 75 people have accepted Him fully. These people have not just raised their hand at an invitation time and been turned loose, they have been discipled beside believers for an extended day-by-day period of time and have been walked through/developed the disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, etc... and are exhibiting the growth and belief of fully-devoted followers of Christ.
PRAISE GOD! The shirts were worth it.
LATEST UPDATE (September 29, 2011): I just received an update from Daniel and Viera Water Network about the work in Las Lajas, Nicaragua that we are helping to fund from the T-shirts we sold earlier in the year. You can catch the interview we did with Daniel back in June to catch the original vision, but for now, on with the latest update.
Hey Jim, how are you doing? I don’t have an official report from the Las Lajas, Nicaragua project yet as it is still underway. However, I just received news that 23 people have trusted Christ so far during the evangelism side of this project. You might remember, that while they are installing this new water system, members of the church are sharing in every home (about 90 total) for an average of 3 hours per home.
One thing that your church can pray for is that the rain has been really heavy in Nica this month and has caused a lot of delays in the project. This has meant that the church folks are stuck out there and away from their homes longer than expected. Plus the clean water is not completed until they can finish all the work. So you can pray for good weather, pray for God to continue to soften hearts during the evangelism outreach, and pray for endurance for those who are out laboring with the community.
Have a great day
Daniel
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We have begun selling the Bay West T-shirts that I've been putting on Facebook and Twitter and that
Randy and Jim wore to Church in the Park on Palm Sunday. These T-shirts won't just be a normal buy and be a walking ad for Bay West, they have a larger purpose.
We are in the process of working with Viera Water Network, a year old ministry based up in Viera, that goes to under-resourced countries to build safe water pumps and safe water systems for people. Over 1.4 million children die each year from preventable diseases caused by unsafe drinking water...that works out to 4,000 deaths per day or 1 every two seconds...that's 5-7 children that have died from a preventable disease due to drinking unsafe water in the time it took you to click to this page and read this far. Hard to believe, huh?
FBC is forming a partnership with VWN and we will be sending a team to community that we have partnered with in Nicaragua in July. We hope to be able to see VWN repair two water supply areas there in the community and my hope for these T-shirts is that the sale of them will pay for at least 1 of the repairs. I hope to be having Daniel from Viera Water Network in to Bay West to give us a better picture of what they are doing and the ministry they are a part of.
Here is an interview from a service on July 24, 2011 at Bay West, with Daniel Richeson, Executive Director of Viera Water Network, outlining the project we'll be supporting in Nicaragua with them.
We will be selling the T-shirts for a minimum price of $15 per shirt...we have made a decision NOT to recoup the cost of the T-shirts and send ALL money given to the shirts to this project. Due to our commitment to the Radical Experiment, we'll make adjustments in our campus budget to make up for the production costs of the T-shirts and any future T-shirt orders for this project, so we can give ALL of the $15 price to the project in Nicaragua.
Why minimum price? We chose this term because we know that some of you will probably want to give more to this project, so anything above $15 given to each shirt will go to the project as well.
Why $15? We have 100 shirts and the average cost of a well repair is $1500...our hope is to pay for one at least and possibly pay for another or have money to put toward another.
We have regular T-shirts, soft cloth (blue, tan, black) and some "Junior Cut Ladies" Tees (Pink/black writing & black/white writing) as well.
If you'd like to buy a T-shirt to support our combined efforts with Viera Water Network in NIcaruagua, please call the church offices at (321) 723-0561 and ask for Bay West's Ministry Assistant, Sandy.
