Community Corner

Oakdale Church Group Will Travel to Nicaragua, But It's Not a 'Mission Trip'

A group from Guardian Angels Church will be traveling to Nicaragua next week to help build relationships abroad.

A group of church members is preparing to travel to Nicaragua next week and they want to make one thing clear: It's not a mission trip.

A group from in Oakdale will spend 11 days in Teustepe, Nicaragua starting July 27. Woodbury resident Carl Scheider is leading the group, which includes State Rep. Nora Slawik. This will be Scheider's 10th visit to the country.  

"What a 'mission trip' means to me is that they need religion or help, and it turns out they are far more religious than we are," Scheider said. "In fact, they often teach us bout faith and how to live life."

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Scheider said the group used to have a "project mentality" when the church started sending people to Nicaragua about 30 years ago. In partnership with non-profits, the church groups would provide money for different projects or send actualy supplies for various needs. 

But now the mentality has shifted from a project-focus to just building relationships.

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"The message they get is that you get money so if we need something we need to find you, but this is not best way to proceed in long term," Scheider said. "So they switched gears and said this is a relationship. We’ll visit back and forth and do whatever we can, but we’re not going to make them dependent." 

This shift occurred when the church began partnering with Escuela AKF, a non-profit in Nicaragua. Escuela AKF is not affiliated with any church or governmental entity. It is a school that strivest toward "building a world of justice and love," according to its website.

Escuela AKF works with communities in the north, south, east and west and desires to join other campaigns working toward justice and systemic change. 

Through Guardian Angels' relationship with Escuela AKF, church groups have helped educate people in Teustepe on how to organize themselves and attain drinkable water in the community. Residents of Teustepe are also working on building a community center and community garden. Guardian Angels helped raise money to go toward the inital downpayment for the property, but the people of Teustepe will be the legal entity and are the ones running the initiative, Scheider said.

"The message we would like them to get is that 'I can fix this, we have resources,'" Scheider said. "We're just going down to bless them and bless what they're doing. Not to investigate or direct questions, but to say 'We're here. How can we help?'" 

 

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