“Never again will there be in it a infant who live but a few days…” Isaiah 65:20 NIV

This is a journal article to share our gratitude for the privilege of serving as your IM missionaries and the importance of your World Mission Offering as well as targeted support for missionaries. Without your support, we would not be on the field here in Nicaragua, nor would any of our other missionary colleagues all over the world! We are also so grateful for all those who supported the All Staff Gathering and the World Mission Conference this year. We were able to meet so many people and learn from our missionary colleagues, partners, and our IM churches to see how God is working through so many people to transform our world.  So THANK YOU to all our churches, partners, and individual supporters who keep all of us on the field in IM!

As your medical missionaries, we thank IM and the World Mission Offering for helping to make it possible for all of us together to reach people in remote areas of Nicaragua with no other access to healthcare. Thanks to our missionary support, we have the opportunity dedicate ourselves as physicians and public health professionals to the ministry of AMOS Health and Hope. AMOS stands for A Ministry of Sharing, and is also named for the prophet Amos because of his sensitivity to the poor and marginalized populations we work with. The mission of AMOS  is to witness to rural communities by sharing the Gospel and serving rural communities with basic preventive health care so that children and women do not die of easily preventable deaths. In Nicaragua, many children die from completely preventable causes of death simply because of the lack of access to healthcare and the conditions of extreme poverty they live in. We train local village leaders to become barefoot doctors, or “health promoters” who can treat the most common illnesses and prevent unnecessary deaths in children and women. We see the community as our partners and accompany them in identifying and solving problems like anemia, malnutrition and the need for clean water. Our health promoter follow the example of Jesus in addressing spiritual, emotional, and spiritual health.

Since we helped found AMOS in 2006, it has grown from a few people serving a handful of communities to an organization now working in 34 rural communities and serving more than 20,000 people.  The growth has been possible thanks to 1) your missionary support, 2) a growing network of individuals and churches who have felt called to participate in mission with AMOS through volunteering, prayer and financial support and 3) and rural communities themselves who we have accompanied to help build small community clinics, provide basic medications, and organize to save lives and improve the health and well being of their communities.  Click here for a link to our latest update video on AMOS

Over the past five years, your support has made the following possible!

• Trained and supported over 30 health promoters who took care of over 81,866 rural clinic visits and 22,288 home visits to people who would otherwise have no other access to health care
•    Prevented child deaths through the network of health promoters and their ability to detect signs of danger and treat illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea which commonly kill children in remote rural area
• Provided essential medications to over 10,000 people annually through White Cross! (Thank you White Cross)
• Received over 74 mission teams and over 167 volunteers who accompany and work alongside communities to support community-driven projects such as build clinics, repair schools and install water systems.  The actual projects done by the  mission teams are a way to support the ongoing health work carried on by our staff and community leaders all year round.
•  Provided over 1000 families with clean water filters to prevent diarrhea
• Developed a functional community-based primary health care system to serve the rural poor that can serve as a model for other low-resources settings.
• Provided sustainable and dignified jobs to over 40 staff members at AMOS.
• Developed a 9 week global health practicum and internship for students interested in global health
• Accompanied our rural communities so they may be encouraged and be empowered to be active participants in the well-being and health of their communities

We thank you once again for being such an important part of our ministry in Nicaragua — to serve the least of these, and to work towards empowering communities and each other to serve more and help saves lives in the name of Christ.

Que Dios Les Bendiga!

With much gratitude,

Laura and David