“Little Is Much When God Is in It.”
This inspirational Gospel song has left its imprint on the eight-member mission team from Blue Springs Church of the Nazarene.
Led by Kevin Williamson, the team of Bonnie Pfizer, Bob Shrauner, Clay Ellis, Jene Johnson, Nona Williamson, Pablo Miranda and Theresa Milton recently returned from Central America where they used their limited resources and talents to make a difference in the Central American country of El Salvador.
What the team accomplished was building a two-room addition to Santa Tecla Nazarene Church, the host church in the San Salvador suburb of Santa Tecla, and helping to plant a Nazarene church.
Joining the Blue Springs team in these two endeavors were members of the host church, serving as interpreters and providing most of the skilled laborers.
After constructing the church addition in three days, the team turned its attention to the tiny mountainous village of San Jose Villanueva. In a 12-hour period, the team went house-to-house evangelizing with the aid of an Evange Cube, which unfolds and tells the Gospel story.
“On that day, we showed the “Jesus” film, had vacation Bible school, set up a free health clinic and went to schools and gave away toothbrushes and toothpaste,” says Kevin, who was on his third mission trip.
What the Blue Springs team accomplished in El Salvador was small in scale. But its accomplishment was much, because God was in it from the beginning.
Reflecting on his experiences, Kevin spoke emotionally about being overwhelmed with joy seeing for the first time the lights he helped install glowing in the completed addition at the rear of the church.
The joy, Kevin says, wasn’t over the completion of the addition. Rather, it stemmed from the fact the team had done something for the Lord that really mattered.
With the Lord’s help, he says, “We felt we had done something right that helps people.”
Now, the children and youth, who formerly met on an outdoor concrete slab behind the church, have their own rooms.
The addition also will be used to conduct Bible training classes for young pastors and missionaries.
With the $10,000 church members raised for the Feb. 5-12 trip, the mission team purchased new tables, teachers’ desks and chairs for the addition.
Making her first mission trip was Bonnie Pfizer, a 27-year-old preschool teacher, who received a monumental blessing long before she embarked, when the Lord intervened in a miraculous manner through an old friend.
The University of Central Missouri graduate watched sadly as the money she received at her graduation party last spring disappeared when her car quit running a few months later. That money was earmarked for El Salvador. Now, the money was gone, and the trip she felt compelled to take was no longer possible. Or, so she thought.
“There went my hope,” says Bonnie, who is an energetic bundle of excitement.
So, in her “devastation” and “embarrassment,” Bonnie accepted an invitation to visit a “dear friend” unable to attend her graduation party.
Upon opening her friend’s graduation card, she found $100 inside.
Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks as she eyed the generous gift and realized she could start over again to raise the needed funds.
When asked by her friend why she was teary-eyed, Bonnie shared the story of having to use her mission-trip money to repair her old, broken-down car.
Moved by her story, the friend pried out of Bonnie how much she needed to go to El Salvador, wrote out a check in that amount and handed it to her.
Bonnie “bawled” as her friend wrote the check, remembering her friend’s passionate plea: “I can’t be there (San Salvador). But don’t stop God from using my hands and feet. Will you allow me?
Broken by her friend’s love and generosity, Bonnie accepted the gift, replying: “Every person I touch (in El Salvador), you are going to be right there.”
Bonnie says she was “so, so humbled and excited,” knowing then God wanted her to go (on the trip).
On the construction project Bonnie found herself mixing and pouring concrete, laying brick, painting and performing other odd jobs. There were no idle moments. After finishing their work, the female team members joined two teenage girls from the host church and visited with church members no longer attending worship regularly or unable to attend because of illness.
“The people were so receptive, so eager for us to be there,” Bonnie says, noting the language barrier was not an issue because “we all had that mutual love.”
Dressed as clowns, Bonnie and others walked up and down the hilly, dirt roads in San Jose Villanueva, stopping at houses along the way to inform the occupants about the free medical clinic in town, vacation Bible school in the afternoon and the showing of the “Jesus” film that evening on the dirt soccer field.
The trek along the back roads of the village was a “hot and sticky” adventure and took its toll, Bonnie says, recalling that when she returned to the hotel that night, she had dirt up to her knees.
During the one day in San Jose Villanueva, 114 patients were treated at the medical clinic, 500-plus children received toothbrushes and toothpaste at their respective schools, some 100 children attended vacation Bible school, 100-plus villagers saw the “Jesus” film and 19 villagers accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior in house-to-house evangelism.
Bonnie says she came home from El Salvador with a greater responsibility to outreach more, because the trip opened her eyes to how receptive the El Salvadorans were to hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“I have a new hunger and a new desire not to stop here, but to keep going forward in my every day routine and not to make this a one-time experience.”
Is there another trip on the horizon?
“I hope so. I really do, God willing,” Bonnie sincerely says. “Why stop here. If I stop, who am I?”
