Doug and Julie Effinger in Nicaragua

Reflecting on our time in the USA this summer takes me to the almost bookends to our time which were two conferences. Early in the summer I was able to attend the Vineyard National Conference in Denver Colorado held the second week of July. I was able to attend the conference with the support of HUB City Vineyard and the Recher family who funded my portion, as well as good friends Steve and Layne Fish, and Ron and Nancy Burnett, who allowed me to crash their AirBnB and freeload transportation. Martha Perez pastor of La Viña Jinotepe (our church in Nicaragua) attended the Vineyard National Conference with us. A portion of the contingent from Vancouver Vineyard Church It was an excellent conference with some amazing memories. Most memorable was a point where old school Pastors and leaders were acknowledged for helping to build a movement and second generation pastors and leaders were then acknowledged for taking the baton. We all prayed for one another during our kum ba ya m...

The reason we even come home for the summers is because of our grand kids. We have a 7 year old grandson and a 4 year old grand girl. They are our everything as we get older and they grow up so quickly. We made the decision when Caelum was born that we would make sure that we played a role in their lives even though we live over 3000 miles away. While our 7 year old is on summer vacation, we are home to provide daycare for him. Our 4 year old stays in preschool because if she is taken out she loses her spot. So we get our 7 year old all day ling Monday-Friday. it is the best thing ever. Taking a long shot at BBall. This year we were able to go to the zoo a couple times, go to the Tillamook cheese factory, go to the park a bunch, play hoops out front almost every day, work on some house projects together, and practice school work together. At the Portland Zoo. (Yeah, they have fake animals there. But there are real ones too!) We were able to go camping with them and their p...

This past summer could also be called the Summer of Soccer. In case you didn't already know, I am a huuuuuuge Portland Timber fan. But living out of the country makes it unrealistic for me to be a ticket holder. I'm usually only in Vancouver/Portland for a portion of the season. Not to worry, I have one of the best friends ever in AJ Gomez. AJ is a ticket holder and this year he invited me to about 9 home games. I was able to make six of them. It was amazing. I had such a great time. AJ always invites his friends and clients to the games, so I was able to make new friends as well as reconnect with some old friends. AJ and I, with photobomber Mike Shanaburger. AJ and I go back to 1970 when we played soccer together for the Our Lady of Lourdes Pioneers.we played soccer together in club soccer for the next 8 years. AJ attended Hudson Bay High School and I went to Columbia River. Back in those days we didn't have High School soccer as a school sport, so we played club soc...

Probably the most challenging and rewarding part of the past summer concerned our mom. We decided to bring her back home to Vancouver from Alabama, where she was living with her companion and his family. It was a decision we had hoped to avoid but in the end became an easy decision for my brother and I. The reason: mom's dementia/Alzheimers had gotten to the point that neither her companion nor his family was able to provide her adequate care. When they began discussing placing her in a care facility in in Alabama, we took the initiative to bring her home where she would be near family. She still recognizes her children and grandchildren. At the Atlanta airport bring mom home. We brought mom back shortly after 4th of July. The trip back was uneventful (she was well sedated). We were able to find a nice care home with limited number of residents where she is placed. She seems to enjoy it there. Throughout the summer I tried to visit 2-3 times a week. Once she got settled in w...

We made it back to Nicaragua after 4 months in the the states, mostly in our Vancouver home with our daughter's family. This was the longest extended stay in States since moving to Nicaragua in 2002. Blame the grand kids. Blame conferences. Blame family issues. Doesn't matter,  it was one of the best summers we have had in years. PDX famous carpet. I'm going to break our debrief up into a few different stories to avoid a long post. Suffice it to say, this was a busy summer. I attended two conferences related to our mission activities. We moved my mom, who has dementia, back to Vancouver, where we (her children) can visit her and assist her when needed. We provided daycare to our grandson throughout his summer vacation, which proves to be more enjoyable year after year. Waiting in the Houston's Goerge Bush airport has become a semi annual routine for us. Summer trips home also provide opportunities to go camping, visit other family members, reconnect wit...

I started writing this blog addition on June 5th, the day of our 34th wedding anniversary. What I began to write was that we were not together for our anniversary but I have never felt closer to her than today. After nearly three and a half decades being together, experiencing ups and downs, going through nearly marriage ending trials and coming through without calling it quits, we decided that it was time for an experiment. Actually, we didn't decide. Our daughter did. Here's what I started writing a few weeks ago...   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Experiment is coming to an end. Today officially marks Julie and my 34th anniversary and we are not together to enjoy it. But I can tell you I have never felt closer to her than I do today. She is a woman worthy of so much more than what I have given to her over the last 3 and a half decades. Yet, she chose me and ...

In our ministry, Nica Impact, we are much more than just a program for assisting young adults in their careers. We have expanded our focus to include other educational avenues. One way we do this is through a partnership with the William Minor Foundation. In this partnership have built a local library that we manage where we have books and computer access available to local students to support their studies. All the funding for the library comes from the foundation while Nica Impact manages it. It has proven to be an amazing resource to local young people, especially those from the poorer segments of society. We also have developed a relationship with the US Embassy where they provide daily English classes for teenagers sponsored by the Embassy program called Access English. This program provides scholarships to poorer students so that they can participate in a two year intensive English course. It is an amazing program and we are honored to host one of the classes in our library. ...

Casa Juan Marcos was our attempt to help students aging out from orphanages. We began with 3 young men from orpha #2 and one young man from orpha #1. We provided a rented home, a cook, a staff member as house leader, and food and educational expenses. It seemed to us to be a good program, but what we found was that the young adults from the orphanages did not like the discipline we were expecting from them. We required that they get good grades, communicate with the house leader, go to school daily, and do their chores and such. The four boys that we had lasted just over a year before one by one, they decided they would prefer to not be under our expectations for success that we had. A year after we opened the boys home, we opened one for girls. We rented a house, hired staff, and outfitted the home for four girls from the first two orphanages. When it was time for them to come, three decided not to participate, and the fourth came for two days, filled two backpacks with items from t...

When we arrived at the orphanage for our permanent mission, the first thing we noticed was our house. It was not finished. It was supposed to be finished but it was not. It was missing a lot of things. Doors, windows, a floor, and a ceiling. Over the next 6 months Julie and I completed the house that should have been completed before our arrival. We were disappointed but at the same time we were happy to be near the children. We moved into a small office space as a temporary sleeping quarters until I could get the house far enough along to move in. We also helped to facilitate some mission teams that came because of our permanent roles there. It didn’t take long before we began to realize that although the children loved having us there, many of the staff were suspicious of us. We started to feel tension. Maybe it was cultural, but over a very short period we found ourselves on the outside of staff meetings and ministry discussions. We were never sure why, but noticed that there were...

It was February of 2000 when our plane touched down in Managua, Nicaragua. We were a small group of 7. When we got off the plane we were greeted by 95 degree heat and 95% relative humidity. There was no jetway at the airport in those days. We walked down the portable stairs and were guided into an old, dank, light blue painted building with no air conditioning by two rows of military police all carrying AK-47 military rifles. It was somewhat intimidating. After passing through immigration and customs, we were picked up by two old pick up trucks driven by orphanage staff. Off we went on the 30 kilometer trip to our destination. I remember as we passed through the customs area, there was a wall of glass where families would pick up their loved ones. Faces would be pressed against the glass as literally a hundred or so people were squishing in trying to find their family member as they exited the customs agent. It was quite the first impression. While riding in the back of a pickup truc...

That weekend in Mexico at the orphanage never left my thoughts for very long. When I met Julie I had been sponsoring a little girl in Peru through World Vision. I had never met her and only had a small picture of her and a story. I always wondered what her life was like. Shortly after Julie and I married, my sponsored girl dropped out of the program and I chose not to continue with World Vision. Going to Mexico gave me a glimpse of what it might have been like for her. As my time in the Air Force was coming to an end, the Vineyard was starting a discipleship school at a ranch in the mountains of California about an hour away from our church. It was to be a communal living experience where we would spend time maintaining the ranch while studying and practicing the lessons of the bible. It was April 1984 when the school started and I was scheduled to be discharged from the USAF in June of '84. But as fate would have it (God's timing?), when I tacked my unused leave (vacation) t...

Making the decision to follow Jesus was a radical one for me. I continued attending every meeting I could and was reading my bible non-stop. My learning curve was vertical. Along with some single guys from Edwards AFB we would go drive out together to attend church. For about 9 months we did this religiously, to use a pun. It was hard for us to meet people our age because our commitment was to the military which made it difficult to plug in to ministries at the Vineyard. But we would make the services as often as possible. We also would visit other churches for evening services since the Vineyard did not have a Sunday evening service, and we were hungry for teaching. It was October of 1981 that we visited a church in Rosamond called the Wayside Chapel where after a few Sunday evening services I met the woman who 8 months late became my wife and still is today. We were married June 5th of 1982. Shortly after, we moved on to base housing and opened up a home bible study group in our hous...

I have to apologize again about not updating this blog after so many years. Since opening a Facebook account, we have found it much easier to make quick posts to Facebook than to sit down and write a post or story in a blog. Nevertheless, this is a good medium to inform our friends and acquaintances with longer stories or subject matter. In this post I want to share a little about our story which has led us to a life of vocational missions. In this series of posts, I will go back to what initially sparked my interest in missions. And then share a bit about how we put ourselves in a position to do missions the way we do. I'll talk about some of our challenges along the way. And eventually bring the story to where we are now in the present. Why write about this now? After 15 years of involvement in Nicaragua, and over 13 years living as full time missionaries, we have met so many young people and older folks who look at us and ask, "How did you get here?" All the while ...

Julie and I are getting ready for our Spring trip to the states. You know, tax time and all. This has been our first full year working independent of other organizations (until the end of 2009 we had always partnered with orphanages). With our focus on the extreme poor in Nicaragua through feeding programs and student homes, we have found a niche that is meeting an important void in our area. I've been lame about updating this blog and our ministry blog, Nica Impact. I hope to update both during our time in the states. At least I can say my excuse has been that I've been very busy with construction at our new project location, along with the operations of the student homes and the feeding programs. We've had visitors on a regular basis over the past six months. We had a team from Ames Iowa, Harvest Vineyard who helped us out with a feeding program lunch. They are one of a number of groups that have done this over the past year. Plates of food getting ready to distribute. We...

A couple days ago Julie and I received notice that the girl we have sponsored for the past five years will be returning to family members. Sandra has been living at the El Canyon/Puente de Amistad (Bridge of Friendship) orphanage for the past 5+ years. Julie and I have tried to visit her every month, or as often as time permitted, beginning a few weeks after her admittance into the orphanage. After hearing the news, Julie and I ran down to see her one last time at the orphanage. (Sandra at 8 years old.) I remember the first time we met Sandra at El Canyon. She had only been there for a few days when we came down with a dental team to provide some free dentistry. I dropped the group off at the orphanage just outside of Managua and had to run into Managua to do some errands. When I returned just after mid-day, the group was well into cleanings and checking the kids mouths. Sandra had been the first to get looked at and the dentist said she did really well for never having seen a...