Dulce Nombre de Jesús

Our relationship with Dulce Nombre de Jesús, a rural community in Northwest Nicaragua: Our church has a long term relationship with a Christian Base Community in the village of Dulce Nombre de Jesús, which is in the municipality of Somotillo, Chinendega, Nicaragua. We communicate monthly by letters and yearly we visit each other. We make regular delegations, typically one per year. About 35 different members of our congregation have visited Nombre de Jesús, almost one-half of them being youth, and we have received several delegations from the village. The basis of the relationship is one of mutual understanding and learning, of deepening appreciation of each other's cultures and values, and of encouraging each other in our attempts to live out the values of our Christian Faith.

The people or organization (AKF) which facilitates our relationship: Our involvement in Nicaragua is made possible and immeasurably enhanced by the work of Luis Aguirre and Ellen (Elena) Hendrick, who have formed an organization called Associación Kairos para la Formación (AKF).

Luis has acted informally and sometimes more formally as the national coordinator of Christian Base communities in Nicaragua for the past 25 years. Elena has been living in Nicaragua since the mid 1980s, and has worked primarily with faith-based educational programs between North Americans and Nicaraguans. Both are trained and very skilled in the methods of popular education, using this method and biblical reflection to encourage and promote the self development of the people in these communities.

The broader network, both in Nicaragua and in the US: Luis and Elena now work with (accompany) 9 Nicaraguan communities, visiting each community each month. The Nicaraguan communities all consider themselves Catholic. In some cases the local church or priest is sympathetic to the work of AKF, and in other cases the communities have been excluded from the Catholic church. This is the case in the region of our village, where the communities have collectively formed a lay organization called El Bloque, and refer to themselves as "The Church of the Poor."

Six of the communities have sister churches in the United States. The communities involved with AKF and their sister churches in the north are: