More detailed VDTI news.
As you know last year we started a Vocational Discipleship Training Institute. The purpose of the school was to give a good Biblical, vocational, ministerial and musical foundation to the students. As well as the development of leadership, business administration and marketing skills and to top it off with life skills such as healthy eating, swimming, driving, English and computer basics.
Since our philosophy has always been that a person needs hands-on experience to retain the information that they learn, a very important part of the school was the opening of a cafeteria where we could disciple them in their attitudes and character and where they could develop employee, team, and management as well as administration skills.
So last
August we started the school with 8 young ladies who on the most part had very
little
bible knowledge, no musical skills, poor social skills and no business
education or knowledge of how to even eat healthy. So many skills that we take
for granted in Canada are not even considered necessary here. So precept upon
precept we began to lay the foundation, ripping down wrong thinking patterns and
building new ones like it says in Jeremiah 1:10 I
have called you this day to the oversight of the nations and of the kingdoms
to root out and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow and then to
build and to plant. The fun part is building and planting but it sure
brings a lot of tears and hair loss with the rooting out and pulling down and
not just tears by the students.
After a few months we became a family and before our eyes we started to see an incredible transformation in the girls, to the point that people in the church who said that it wouldn’t work told us they wished they would have put their sons and daughters in the school instead of sending them to university without a good biblical foundation because now they’re children had completely backslidden.
In May we had a few students from Hope College in Michigan come down, as part of their internship, and teach our students marketing. The professor overseeing the project, who had taught university level business education for 30 years around the world was so impressed with our students, that at their graduation she said, “In all my years of teaching I’ve never had a class that caught on to the concepts that we are teaching so quickly and actually were able to discuss between themselves how to implement them into their business!” The reason for this was very simple; the intern teacher only had the theory of the concepts whereas our students were putting all the concepts into practice in their business and seeing what really worked and what didn’t. Another surprise happened at the end of the school year when 2 girls that we didn’t know phoned us and said that had gone to university in Pinotepa and had majored in a four year Computer systems engineering program. Their thesis is to design and build a functioning webpage which they didn’t know how to do. So they had found out through the grapevine about us and wanted to come to Puerto Escondido for 4 months starting the 14th of August, so that our students could teach them how to do web pages.
God is such a great God that when we completely depend on him and are led by him he uses the foolish to confound the wise and he gets the glory.
At the graduation we presented 8 completely different young ladies to the congregation. They held their heads high as they sang a song by Carmen called “HOLDIN ON” with each one playing a different instrument. (Click here to see video clip of the song) The congregation was so surprised that they gave the girls a standing ovation. The girls shared their testimonies about the transformation that happened in their lives; of the triumphs and the struggles and then one of them gave the message and challenged the church with “WE CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS US!” What an incredible reward after taking a leap of faith and deciding to “Enlarge the place of our tent, and let the curtains of our habitations be stretched out; SPARE NOT….
This year we decided that there is still work to be done in and through the girls so we decided to started a second year BY FAITH, as well as a new first year. Because of the awesome transformation of the girls other young people and not so young people want to give one year of their life to be molded and squeezed into the image of Christ. This year 5 young men, (2 who had been in jail and one who has struggled with homosexuality) and 5 young ladies, one who escaped from an abusive relationship which left her pregnant, will be joining us. In all, 15 will be entering into the first year program. We thought last year was a stretching experience; it should be interesting what happens this year!!! For the young men we are looking at starting a mechanic shop, while the new girls the cafeteria and for the 7 second year students, we will be starting a business that they will be starting from scratch; from market study to competing against each other.
It seems every step of the way our vision gets bigger but our resources stay the same so we need a bigger miracle space where God can provide miracle finances, more teachers, more patience, more love etc…We’re so glad our God isn’t limited to our abilities or our finances but to His vision and His work. Please keep us in your prayers as we enter into our second year of challenge and stretching.
God bless you
John and Angela Nickel
Our webpage is www.johnnickel.com
Puerto Escondido before the Sun rises.