NEWS RELEASE

In a single month 17-year-old Caleb Thompson will have seen two extremes of the world – the thriving urban sprawl of Dallas, Texas, and a small poor, village dominated by coffee plantations called Santa Emilia in Nicaragua.

“It’s going to be a huge change, from Dallas to Nicaragua,” Caleb said.  “I’m going from a 12 story hotel to a two room, dirt floor apartment with bamboo stalks on the windows and a mosquito net around my bed.”

The Southeast High School senior plays basketball and baseball for the Lancers.  He is an honor roll student and expects to go to Pittsburg State University to major in Video Production.  Earlier this month he competed at the National TSA Conference in Dallas – the second year in a row he competed nationally at TSA.

But it is the 1,700 mile trip to Central America that is special for the Thompson family.  Caleb’s 13-year-old adopted sister, Anna, was born in Guatemala.

“Anna was almost six months old when we brought her home from Guatemala,” said Debbie Thompson, Caleb and Anna’s mother.  “I knew from the time I brought her home that I would go back someday on a mission.  I felt the need to go back and give back to the country that had given me so much.  I got that opportunity five years later when I traveled back with a mission team to the children’s home where Anna had been for the first few months of her life, and spent a week working and playing with the children there.  After that, I really hoped (my husband) John and the rest of the family would someday have a similar opportunity to serve and live a mission experience.”

That opportunity is finally here.

This Monday, John and Caleb Thompson and a handful of other members from the First Christian Church of Pittsburg will leave for Santa Emilia, located about 12 miles northeast of Matagalpa, the fifth largest city in Nicaragua.  Their church has partnered with the village and Pastor Pat Nixon organizes two trips there each year.  While this is only Pastor Pat’s second trip with his Pittsburg congregation to Santa Emilia, he has been there several times before over the past eight years.

Pastor Pat said they provide a clinic, nurse and medication for the village; and, they are now in the process of building a preschool.  The foundation was put in in February and this trip they will be putting in walls and a floor.  Pastor Pat said the villagers will put in the roof themselves.

“We don’t give them what we want – we give them what they need,” Pastor Pat said.

“My sister being from that region is something that I’ve thought about,” Caleb said.  “It’s just a big circle, giving and receiving.  Central America gave me my sister, why can’t I give them my talents, my time, my hard work to help them build a preschool?”

But bringing medical and school supplies, shoes, and volunteers providing skilled labor is a small part of the trip.  Pastor Pat said it gives members of his congregation a chance to get to know people whose lives are significantly different than ours.  People come back and see the world in a different way, he said, and “that is a good thing”.

“They are not projects, they are friends,” Pastor Pat said.  “We’re all different but we’re all people.”

The Thompson’s first learned of the trip last November.  It was Caleb and Anna’s dad, John, who felt the need to go on this specific mission trip.

“I had been praying for an opportunity to come into my life where I could do something real and this presented itself at the right time,” John said.  “Plus, seeing pictures of the people there and realizing that there was an opportunity to act on my faith and try to make a difference in even just some small way propelled me to commit to the trip.”

John hoped their entire family would be able to make the trip but due to the cost he knew that was not possible, so originally, it was going to be just him making the trip.

“I did have a dream about it and that morning I walked to my Dad and said ‘I want to go, I feel like I need to be there,’ and I firmly believe that was God’s way of telling me I needed to go and that I wouldn’t regret it,” Caleb said.  “This mission trip is important for me because I feel like I was called to do it.”

“Caleb woke up one morning, told me he had a dream the night before about going to Nicaragua, and said he wanted to go – it was awesome – I really felt God’s hand guiding us in this,” John said.  “I’m so excited to have him with me because it will be a memory and experience that he and I will share for the rest of our lives.”

“When making the decision to go down there I asked myself ‘Why should I?’ but that question quickly turned into ‘Why shouldn’t I?’” Caleb said.  “It’s the least I can do and I’m proud to be doing it.”

Caleb volunteered in Joplin after the tornado in 2011, but this is his first mission trip out of the country.

“(This trip is) the first one that really pushes me out of my comfort zone,” Caleb said.  “Being completely disconnected from home is another thing that is pushing me out of my comfort zone.”

Pastor Pat said it will be a humbling experience for everyone going, but especially for Caleb, the youngest member on the trip.

“He (Caleb) can do anything he wants,” Pastor Pat said.  “These kids (in the village), the only reason they can graduate from high school is because a church created a public school.  The idea of going to college is beyond their dreams.  Caleb will visit them, and they know they’re always going to be a coffee worker.”

Caleb is being warned about what to expect.  Beans, rice and corn tortillas every single meal, and lots and lots of coffee.  Families live on $300 per year – if they’re lucky.  Children are infected with lice.

“What choice do they have?” said Pastor Pat.  “It will change your view of the world – (our children) just have never realized such poverty and yet you’ll see people pretty happy with their lives.”

“He has basically just told me that it’s going to be different – that the people there have nothing, work a lot, but mainly hardly have anything at all – and they’re happy – they are completely fine with their poverty because to them, they have everything they need,” Caleb said.  “They aren’t necessarily aware of the housing or the workplaces or the technological advances; the ‘wants’ that we have here in the U.S., so of course they are happy.  It’s neat how someone can have so very little but has such great joy.”

Even though Caleb and his dad have yet to leave for Nicaragua the Thompson’s already know this mission trip will not be their family’s last.  Debbie said she and Anna hope to go in the future, and they especially hope to return to Guatemala so Anna can visit her birth country.

# # #