I began a conversation with Jed Brien early in the Fall of 2019. It was during the time that the country became horrifically aware of the families at our Southern border.
The subject line of his form letter was: Seeking Asylum. The note went on to describe a group of Nicaraguan children, youth and young adult boys on a mission to share the conflict of Nicaragua with U.S. congregations as well as share their native culture through theater and dance.
Mandy Todd, the Director of Worship and Arts Ministry at BFCC during those weeks pushed us to come up with a church year theme that would guide our worship and learning. We came up with ALL: ages, voices, hearts and stories; on earth as it is in heaven.
I am from the multicultural, Washington D.C. metro area. Hosting a group of Spanish speaking children, youth and young adults seemed heavenly in homogeneous Northern, Colorado Springs. BFCC is small and mighty. We are still strengthening our core from the inside out. The congregation also has a big heart and has a desire to be active in mission work. So, we decided to bring a mission to them.
Jed and I settled on a week for them to come stay at the church. We would provide them with a place to stay, food, community and a shower. What they would provide us was more than we could have imagined.
The group is called The Nicavanglists (https://www.nicavangelists.com/). They are a full time grass-roots, volunteer mission group that travels throughout the U.S. educating Christian communities about their native culture and the conflict in Nicaragua. While traveling, they seek assistance from local churches. It is a group much like Luther Volunteer Corps or the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Most of the volunteers are teenagers or young adults that have gained Asylum Seeker status in the U.S. Some of them are young children that were pulled out of extreme poverty. For now, most of them cannot leave and some of them can return on a temporary basis.
Our Mission week with The Nicavanglists came to an end and we all said “see you next year!” Let me be clear. We were just as much a mission project to them, as they were to us. The relationship was mutual.
At the end of November, I got another message from Jed. He said “we need a holiday home church.” In keeping with our all church theme and our newly created purpose statement:
Serve God. With your Whole Heart.
Love. With No Exceptions.
Create Sanctuary. For All.
We could not be the inn that said we had no room. The Nicavanglists have been with us for six weeks. For some of the time they stayed in a cabin at La Foret Conference and Retreat Center (½ mile from the church), a and now they are in our Fellowship Hall. Their 2020 tour begins at the end of the month.
They have been equal participants in our worship on Sunday mornings. They have shared their language and we have shared ours. They have shared their stories and we have also shared ours. We have become friends. We have become a community. Their presence among us has been a blessing. We have learned about their call to ministry as they have learned about our call to ministry.
This communion has been radical hospitality of the heart and home. For some, it has been hard to understand. For others, uncomfortable. There have been many questions and wonders. It is a unique grassroots group that is enthusiastic, joyful, sometimes messy and they bring all of who they are... cultural differences and all.
The hope for these boys is that they will return home to Nicaragua and be a part of the peace-making resistance in the midst of extreme conflict. The good news, they will know more, they will be educated, resourced and ready to take on the world.
Below you will find a piece written after an interview with Jed. And, if you have space in your congregation and want to bring mission to you contact The Nicavanglists.
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Good afternoon, I am Jed Brien, director of Capital on the Edge and here with Jonny Rivera Mendoza who joins me as the coordinator of this U.S. group of Nicavangelists. The Nicavanglists are a performing troupe of asylum seekers and refugees from Nicaragua. These boys and young men spend their lives traveling around the United States sharing not only their street dancing- known as tricking - but their culture and hope for a better world. All over this country they share the story of their country and their lives helping to build awareness of the struggle that exists in Nicaragua and the ways in which God is at work in the midst of all of it.
Nicaragua is a country of poverty, political chaos and violence. On the 18th of April 2018, our world was turned upside down. A series of events led to a crisis which has since spiraled out of control. Now at the hands of a brutal, genocidal dictator, hundreds of Nicaraguans are dead, thousands have been injured, falsely imprisoned, tortured, and tens of thousands are currently seeking asylum in Costa Rica. The list of despicable human rights abuses is extensive- in particular attacks on children, women, the LGBT community and the Church.
I do this work because missionary work is in my blood. My parents were missionaries in Papua/New Guinea and then a few years after I was born became missionaries for Youth with a Mission and ran a school in Australia. Throughout my life I have tried to get away from this work, but God keeps pulling me back.
About ten years ago, I was a teacher at a private school in Nicaragua with privileged families and children. When I began to look around my own Barrio and witnessed extreme poverty and a lack of any quality education, it wasn’t long before I quit my job at the American/private school and opened up my own school. In those first days, we did it all out of my home. With my horse and children we walked around the neighborhood and asked what were the needs of the families? We would stop and pray with each other and then they would tell us. They needed to learn English and they needed to get their young children off the street. The school began to grow and it became my passion.
It was during a meeting with another missionary from Haiti when we saw some ‘street kids,’ tricking. Tricking is based in Capoeira. It is gymnastics combined with martial arts dance. We were blown away. The skill, the athletic ability, the joy in their faces...we were mesmerized. I invited the kids back to the school with me to help to teach the younger kids a new skill. As the conflict worsened in Nicaragua, I had a desire to give the kids new experiences and get them out of the conflict of their home country. Each year the committed fellas in our program collaborate and put together a street theatre production which combines both a spiritual element and Nicaraguan culture.
We have been called to speak out in the international media against the repression and genocide occuring in Nicaragua. We’ve been advocating for those attacked, kidnapped, illegally detained, beaten, sexally assualted, tortured, burnt alive and murdered. Through their show we fight for justice and peace. We do this by spending most of the year traveling from congregation to congregation educating the people of this country as well as keeping the youth safe through asylum.
Throughout the past few years we have landed ourselves on the cover of the LA Times, and on Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC. This media has made us vulnerable to the resonating gong of the genocidal regime of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. It is simply not safe for us to return right now to Nicaragua.
I started this work because I feel called to serve the people of Nicaragua, and in particular the children and youth of Nicaragua… I continue to do this work because I want to keep these and other kids alive. As we share our story and live this nomadic and sometimes challenging life, I also carry in my heart the hope that these experiences we have will also help them find out who they are, where God is calling them, and what it means to follow God. In the meantime I, and others, do our best to help them continue with their scholastic learning, especially learning the English language. Deep down, I know I, and all of us, do hope one day we can return to a safe and healthy Nicaragua where we can be with our own community and family. We pray the work we do in churches like this will help make it a reality.