AMOR, AMOR, AMOR, AMOS (AMOR = LOVE = AMOS)
I hold the light of all the Advent candles in my heart as I reflect on AMOS Health and Hope. Let’s start with today’s candle, the candle of LOVE (AMOR).
This partnership was planted in 2004 by the ABC Mission Group, when they asked to be connected to a missionary so a loving relationship could grow. Jonathan and I were lucky to meet David and Laura Parajon during their first Pullen visit, at breakfast in the home of Hilda and Larry Highfill. David and Laura are medical doctors with a public health and preventive medicine perspective, who provided health care in Nicaragua for years by training and empowering local leaders to assess and improve their own community’s health.
Our love was strengthened during exploratory trips, which were followed by 6 Pullen delegation teams who experienced life-changing stays in remote communities. These journeys have been a source of deep participatory joy. We worked alongside local health committees and AMOS staff, sharing work, meals, devotionals, songs, tears and laughter. We enjoyed the laughter and play of children, the creation of Ojos de Dios ornaments, tentative Spanish conversations, home visits, and starlit nights. We adventured through bucket baths, latrines, cold showers, mosquito spray, bed nets, and hot crowded sleeping quarters. Before, during and after each trip, we visualized new and improved clinic spaces and 60 water filters installed in homes. We rejoiced as we thought of people using the glasses we provided. And we held the people in the rural communities, and the AMOS team members, in our hearts.
Back at Pullen, we experienced the JOY of hospitality, receiving the Parajon family, AMOS staff, and AMOS board members at Pullen, hosting fund-raising dinners and mission group meetings. Many threads wove a rich tapestry of connection.
We experienced the JOY of caring, as we assembled and transported hundreds of baby layettes, which are distributed to pregnant women in the communities to incentivize participation in prenatal care and safe delivery.
We take joy in the knowledge that we are part of something amazing, where people in remote communities in the second poorest country in our hemisphere tap into their own wisdom, receiving training and tools to help themselves, to organize, to assess their needs and to form partnerships to meet those needs.
We experience PEACE as we know that children do not have to die of preventable diseases, mothers do not have to die in childbirth, people can help one another, and we can come alongside.
HOPE is part of the DNA of AMOS, embedded in the name:
AMOS, A Ministry Of Sharing Health and Hope. Amos was born in 2007, and continues to grow. Recent challenges include Hurricane Eta and Iota in 2020, the Zika virus, political instability and violence, the coronavirus pandemic, and the need to empower Nicaraguan leadership in 2020, when David and Laura moved to new avenues of service in New Mexico.
The dreams of AMOS reflect those of Isaiah:
Imagine a world where the place you are born does not determine your opportunity in life – where every one of God’s children has the physical, emotional, and spiritual health needed to unlock their full potential. The solution is not new or high-tech. It lies in the hands of our world’s greatest resource – its people.
How can each of us come alongside our partners at AMOS Health and Hope?
Give through the Pullen Advent offering. Funds from the past 2 Advent offerings paid for repairs to solar panels and interior walls at three clinics.
Stop by the Advent Offering table in the information room today to talk with us about the upcoming trip, sign up for emails, or to participate in our drawing!
Travel to Nicaragua! We hope to bring a delegation in the fall of 2023, to work alongside a local community on a project they have chosen. Talk to David Anderson and prior travelers to learn more.
Connect to AMOS by visiting the website (amoshealth.org), and sign up for regular updates.
Read “Healing the World”, a book about Gustavo Parajon which will be released in 2023.
Contact Deb Norton to receive updates on the Pullen - AMOS relationship.
-Deb Norton
