My team and I are currently in Jinotepe, Nicaragua. Our ministry contacts for the month are Glenn and Lynne Schweitzer, pastors and missionaries from Maryland. They are involved in various ministries in Nicaragua including feeding programs in neighboring communities, several church plants, and a teen home for abandoned, abused and neglected children (Quinta Esperanza). In June 2005, the Schweitzers took over what is now Hotel Casa Mateo in order to fund their ministry efforts. They have an awesome story of how God called them to Nicaragua along with a huge vision God has given them for this land.
It has been such a pleasure to work with them so far. Their passion for the people of this place is contagious among so many others. God has given them a big vision for transforming Nicaragua that some may view as impossible but they have been faithful and have continued to push toward expanding their ministry as they feel led despite tough financial circumstances.
What is now Hotel Casa Mateo, was originally the home of the president of Nicaragua in the 1930s. During The Sandinista Revolution in the seventies the hotel was taken over by the current corrupt leader, Daniel Ortega, and other members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and was a military post for the national guard. Soldiers and prisoners of war were housed in the hotel. After the war, the hotel was eventually returned to original owners.
Who would have thought that this hotel, built almost eighty years as a home for a communist leader, would now be a hotel operating to house missionaries and to fund projects that promote the Kingdom of Christ? I don’t think that this communist leader had this in mind when he built this building. But I have no doubt that God knew exactly what this man was building. God was setting up things for Hotel Casa Mateo nearly eighty years before this ministry even came into existence. He was working behind the scenes, engineering circumstances. And God is doing the same for you.
I was just reading a story about how it took a sizable setback in this man’s life to get him where God really wanted him to go. “It took a God-ordained opportunity that came as a really well-disguised problem. Opportunities often look like insurmountable obstacles. If we want to take advantage of these opportunities,we have to learn to see the problems in a new way–God’s way. Then our biggest problems may just start looking like our greatest opportunities.”
“Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Maybe faith is trusting God no matter how impossible the odds are. Maybe our impossible situations are opportunities to experience a new dimension of God’s glory.”
I challenge you to embrace the circumstances you are in–no matter how impossible the odds may seem. Give control to God and
allow Him to blow you away!
