In the beginning...

More than anything else, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matthew 22:37-39). 


When you get up and when you go to sleep - love God, love others. When you travel on vacation and when you travel as part of a mission team - love God, love others. When you encounter an immigrant and when you overhear a foreign language - love God, love others. The essence of serving with eyes wide open is gaining cultural intelligence in order to more effectively reflect God to people who are culturally different from you. 
-David A. Livermore, from Serving With Eyes Wide Open

The 2014 Nicaragua ACS team is starting their preparations with eager anticipation of our trip to Centro De Fe Vida Nueva – our partner school in Managua, Nicaragua. Through Edu Deo Ministries School2School program we have built an international relationship based on mutual trust to deepen understanding of God’s work through His people around the world.

Currently, 17 students and leaders come together on a regular basis to prepare and better understand our purpose and vision for our travel to Nicaragua. Our preparations are based on building team unity, increasing our cultural intelligence, personal transformation of team members as they explore and discover God’s plan for them as Kingdom builders, connecting students from ACS with other students from our partner school and to grapple with basic Spanish survival language learning.

 These preparations will bring us to spring break 2014 when the team will travel to Nicaragua to join with the school and students of Centro de Fe. During this time we will be able to unite for a global experience of collaboration, transformation, service and learning – while discovering amazing differences and similarities. God has a plan for personal and global transformation and we are thrilled to be given the opportunity to participate and witness His Sovereignty in it all.

NICARAGUA 2014 TEAM

Wes Braun                              Amanda de Waal

Casey De Jong                       Mariah Dykman

Alice  Jun                                Stephanie Keis

Chris MacIntosh                      Stephanie Stoker

Danica Veeneman                  Brendan Visser          

Jenna Visser                           Lucas Wishart

Rosalyn Yu

Leaders – Bethany Bakker, Andrea Korevaar, Scott and Angela Visser

We have started this blog at the beginning of our preparations so that we can be inclusive of the entire ACS community and share some of our hearts, our thoughts, our learning’s, our excitement and our fears for the journey God has set before us all.

We ask that you as an ACS community, as friends and family, as fellow Kingdom builders uphold our team, our school community, Edu Deo ministries and Centro De Fe in your prayers as we prepare and as we go!