Featured Story

Restoring A Nation
July 2002

The following article was written by Emilio Padilla Morales, the director of the Arms of Love Children's Home in Managua, Nicaragua. A native of Nicaragua, Emilio shares how his new ministry with Arms of Love is the fulfillment of a 20-year-old vision to help children at risk in his native country.

I first became involved with the Arms of Love Children's Home in Nicaragua as part of a short consultancy period. While living in Guatemala, I heard through my relatives in Managua that there was an opportunity to serve as the director of a Christian children's home. Lacking any prior knowledge of the ministry and the people involved, I agreed to serve the project as a short-term consultant. It was not until I began working with the project that I realized this was not a temporary position, but a calling from God and the fulfillment of my visions and dreams of twenty years ago, to help bring restoration to my native country.

I am a Nicaraguan by birth, but I received an education in business management in the United States in the 1960's. The U.S. and Nicaraguan governments were cooperating with each other on many different levels at that time, and this gave me the opportunity to study business, finance, accounting, and administration with the U.S. Army and Air Force in Texas over a period of about eight years. I subsequently served as an administrator of the Children's Hospital in Managua, but then left Nicaragua in 1979 at the time of the Sandinista revolution and began supporting the opposition from Guatemala.

In 1982, I had the opportunity to meet Oren Paris II, Ray Wilkerson, now deceased, Brance Edwards and Marina Rodriguez, all of whom were connected with Youth With a Mission, at a breakfast table at the Panamerican Hotel in Guatemala City. At the time, I was under extreme stress due to my political involvement with the turmoil and upheavals of my native country, Nicaragua. I was not a Christian at that time and I did not perceive any need to become one.

Then, in 1983, I met another missionary from YWAM, this time, a young and very likeable person, Chip Brown. During one of our political conversations, back at my home in Antigua Guatemala, I said during an outburst, "Hypocrisy is the name of the game," and he answered me back, "Love is the name of Jesus Christ." That started a continuing relationship with the YWAM missionaries who were working in Guatemala, which would eventually lead to my abandoning my political involvement and dedicating my life to Christ.

Birth of a Vision

During this time, civil war continued to afflict my country. Young children and teens were leaving Nicaragua, pushed out of its border by worried parents who did not want them involved in the cruel and bloody fighting in the jungles and mountains. The YWAM missionaries wanted to start a project for these children by buying a property and setting up a temporary shelter for them in Guatemala, so they asked me to become an advisor or manager for the project, inviting me to their base in Elm Springs, Arkansas. I had at that time, in my initial Christian desire to serve, a vision to help and restore the exiled youth of my country, with a further desire to expand that vision to embrace all those children in similar circumstances.

My wife and I, together with three of my children, moved to Arkansas in 1986, where we participated in discipleship and missionary training. During that time, I learned to know God and myself and how to find my place in the kingdom of God. I also learned about God's plans and His timing, and how He opens and closes doors for those who decide to serve Him.

Unfortunately, circumstances in Guatemala did not allow the vision and dream for the children's shelter to come true. But I continued to serve with YWAM for the next 16 years and had many wonderful experiences, missionary ones as well as administrative, planning and control ones. I even managed a Christian television station for YWAM, but I had no opportunity to fulfill my initial vision and dream to help the young people of my country.

In 2000, we had the opportunity to work among Central American immigrants in the United States, who gathered in large numbers in Northwest Arkansas, but when we saw a wonderful missionary door close at the beginning of 2001, we decided to retire and move back to Guatemala to be with our sons and grandchildren. Now I see that this period of time was a required resting time and that the Lord was preparing us for our next challenge. In February 2002, through unusual circumstances, I got into contact with Arms of Love, the sponsor of a very unique project that included a Children's Home in Managua, Nicaragua.

Just two weeks before, I had been talking with one of my daughters-in-law about the restlessness I was experiencing and the rising need to find new work to fill my days. Who could have guessed that this was a calling from God? Who would have guessed that what was rising up in my path was not simply a laboral challenge but an opportunity to serve Him as He revived my vision and dreams of 1983?

The Vision Revived

More than 20 years ago, when I first lived in Nicaragua, I remember institutions like the "Orphan Girls from Nazareth House" that offered protection, care and education to abandoned and destitute girls on a permanent basis. They were very suscessful in their efforts and their girls often found employment as domestic help. Some even married, in adequate circumstances. But these children were always known as orphans and as products of an institutional - even if private - approach.

Over the past 20 years, social upheavals and changes have deeply affected my country. While it is very sad and uncomfortable for me, as a Nicaraguan, to make these observations, some things are prevalent and easily recognizable. The country, as a whole, has receded in its social development. The fabric of the family has unraveled, and families of two biological parents raising their own children are increasingly rare. There is rampant corruption, and moral values and standards are sorely lacking. There is a pervasive feeling and sense of pettiness and distrust; despair among some; acceptance of circumstances by many; and opportunism that shows in the grabbing of any opportunity for personal profit or advantage.

Many of the better-educated people have left Nicaragua and their offspring do not want to return, especially those living in the United States. Seventy percent of the resident population in Nicaragua is younger than 30, and a majority of young adults are single mothers. Paternal responsibility is badly lacking and women, who presently are the better-educated sector in their age bracket (due to the nearly universal participation of the men in armed conflicts in the 1970's and 1980's), are holding better paying jobs than the men and have embraced a sexually liberated behavior. This has led to a rise in unwanted pregnancies, single motherhood, and male irresponsibility, all of which add to financial circumstances that are already difficult.

In response to these social problems and conflicts, the government has promoted the protection of children and the reunification of families through a government agency known as "My Family Governmental Ministry." Unfortunately, this government agency often emphasizes temporary protection and solutions, rather than solutions that will yield the greatest long-term benefit. Moreover, the government agency often promotes family reunification as a value greater than protecting children from abusive relatives.

Into this general environment comes the Arms of Love vision and project, which offers a very contrasting approach. The ministry of Arms of Love is rooted in the personal circumstances of some abandoned but overcoming people, who through a blend of personal achievement and a desire to share experiences and resources from a Christian perspective, seek to achieve a comprehensive and rightful restoration of moral, social, and spiritual values for destitute, abandoned and abused children.

The ministry of Arms of Love emphasizes providing abandoned and abused children with substitute Christian parenting and an upbringing in a family environment that focuses on the care of the entire child, in all of its physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and educational levels. This approach in Nicaragua is something new, invigorating and challenging. It goes to the deep roots of the social problems of the Nicaragua of today - rebuilding the fabric of the family, which is at the heart of so many of society's problems.

It is amazing how similar the background experiences are of those involved in this ministry. So many of the people involved have experienced abandonment and neglect in their own lives, as well as Christian care and concern. This is the appeal and the foundation of the Arms of Love vision and its present project in Nicaragua: providing destitute children with Christian family values and a rightful home environment, with blessings overflowing to the surrounding community in the provision of Christian education, from the basic levels to the high school and vocational levels - so that while the children in the Children's Home heal from their past and prepare for their future, the cycle of poverty is likewise broken for other children at risk in the community. By using the Children's Home as a model of the Christian family, an example of comprehensive and holistic Christian care and discipleship for children in need - and by placing it at the center of a broader project that includes a grammar school, a high school, meal programs, vocational training, and a church that serve the broader community - we can restore the values of the community and the social environment that once existed in Nicaragua.

At the present time, my personal challenge and immediate objectives, after considering all the aspects and characteristics of the project, are to (1) become Christian substitute grandparents, my wife and I, of these destituted and unprotected children; (2) mentor the current houseparents; and (3) manage the financial and administrative aspects of the project. God has called me to be an important part of this overflowing and meaningful restoration project, and I am looking forward to the completion of the work He has given me to do.

I would ask you to pray:

Would He want you involved in supporting this project?
Prayerfully? Financially?
Personally or through your church?
With your personal labor?
With short-term ministry teams?
With materials?

It is a wonderful vision!
It is a wonderful mission!
It is a wonderful project!

Will you help us to restore these children and, in the end, a nation?