palmers_92203
Posted: 9/19/03
Jonathan Palmer prepares for a river crossing in Nicaragua. |
Visiting family means missions for Mesquite teens
By George Henson
Staff Writer
Some youth spent their summer doing missions, while others visited relatives. Some may have done both. A Mesquite pair, however, accomplished both at the same time.
Jonathan and Katherine Palmer, members of Lakeside Baptist Church in Dallas, spent six weeks in northern Nicaragua assisting their aunt and uncle, International Mission Board missionaries Jim and Viola Palmer, with a variety of mission projects.
The teens are the children of Brenda and Joel Palmer of Mesquite.
The brother and sister took flight from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport June 28 and returned Aug. 9, but the rustic conditions they lived in during the interim kept them well-grounded.
Katherine, 15, was to work at a Bible institute for lay pastors, evaluating their vision and matching them up with used eyeglasses donated by American congregations, but that plan changed rapidly.
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Katherine Palmer (left) helped teach English in a Christian academy in Managua. |
Her aunt contracted a viral lung infection and had to be transported to Managua on the other side of the country. Katherine accompanied her from the ministry center in Puerto Cabezas, but although her plans changed the overarching goal of ministry did not.
In Managua, she worked at a Christian academy started by her missionary aunt and uncle years before. She taught preschoolers English.
Even after her aunt was able to return to Puerto Cabezas, she still was weak, so Katherine helped out by making pig food, feeding the pigs and caring for a pregnant goat.
Jonathan, 16, meanwhile had been making the living conditions for pigs in a distant village more comfortable. Comfort was not what he was feeling, however.
The 90-mile trip to the village of Ulwas traversed roads so rough that the trip took more than eight hours. While his view of the rainforest may have been good, his seat was not–he made the day-long trip perched high atop the load of materials needed for the project.
Working with a volunteer group from Americus, Ga., he helped build a pig pen and a storage facility for beans and rice. The “Seeds of Hope” program is important because the villagers in the area do not have the means of building structures for storing grain for use as seed. Typically, because any saved grain would be eaten by the many weevils native to the rain forest before the next planting season, everything is sold with nothing kept for seed.
Because no banks exist, all the money typically is used to buy goods until no money is left. Then, when planting times arises, everything must be sold at a lower price so seed can be bought in a vicious downward cycle.
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Katherine with a parrot in Nicaragua. |
The project also brought sealed wells to the village. Villages in this region typically get drinking water from the river, where washing and bathing also are done, or from an uncovered well that all manner of things fall into, leading to many diseases.
Jim and Viola Palmer work mainly with the Miskito tribe, but they also work with the Sumu people. The Sumu live deep within the rain forest, where no Baptist presence exists. In an effort to rectify this, Jonathan, his uncle and a group from Texas Baptist Men surveyed a number of tribes during a six-day excursion into unspoiled territory.
The first stop for the group was in the village of Sakalwas to meet with the tribal council and gain approval for trekking into tribal lands. More than 90 minutes passed before permission was gained, but they later learned it was time well spent. A Moravian pastor in one of the villages told them a small Pentecostal group entered without permission and was bound by villagers and kept in a small, dark hut until morning, when they were released with instructions never to return.
When the missionaries arrived in the village of Suniwas, they showed the “Jesus” film in the Moskito language, since it has not yet been translated into Sumu.
The villagers were mesmerized by the movie, Palmer said. “These are people who have never seen a car or a light bulb. The 'Jesus' film will impact their lives in ways we can only imagine.”
Each day, the group traveled deeper into the rain forest, sometimes traversing wet and muddy trails and sometimes floating down almost unnavigable rivers. The deeper they went into the jungle, the more excited was their reception.
“The villagers here in Kibnusa can't remember the last time white people came into their village. No one can believe the team would come so far to show the 'Jesus' film and talk about Jesus,” Palmer reported to those praying for the group about the fourth day of the hike.
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Jonathan preparing for a rough ride. |
The next day, they trekked deeper still into the rain forest. “The canopy was so thick it was dark on the trail,” Palmer wrote.
Jonathan remembers that day vividly. “We heard this loud, strange sound all around us and couldn't figure out what it was. So we just kept walking. After about five minutes, the rain finally began to hit us. We had been hearing the downpour on the canopy of the rain forest, but it was so thick the rain wasn't hitting the ground.”
His last couple of weeks of summer missions work weren't so exotic, however. He helped with two medical missions with the highly exalted position of “grunt worker.”
“We put up tents, hauled water, did whatever else was needed like playing with the kids while their parents were busy and in the evening took down the tents so we could start all over again the next morning.”
Katherine returned to her job of fitting adults with eyeglasses. Using a hand-drawn eye chart using combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, she sought to determine the strength of corrective lenses needed and match it with the eyeglasses on hand.
The job was made much harder, however, because many villagers want eyeglasses with interesting frames rather than the eyeglasses they needed.
Jonathan found working with his aunt and uncle made the mission experience fuller than it might have been otherwise. He enjoyed spending time with a relative he doesn't get to see as often as he would like.
He also gained more insight into the life of a missionary than other volunteers might.
Katherine took home a similar lesson.
“When you think of missionaries, you think, 'They're perfect.' But when it's your aunt and uncle, you know they're not perfect and you realize that real people can be missionaries.”