I have no excuse…please read!

Hello you out there! I’m not sure who you are reading this right now or how you made it to this website and blog entry, but since you’re here I want to go ahead and confess that i’ve been terrible about updating this blog on a monthly basis, which is the minimum that I had wanted to accomplish when we launched this new site a few years back. So I ask for your forgiveness and I thank you for your patience and willingness to read what I will be typing out in this blog update. I have a lot of thoughts and there is so much I could say, but I know that in today’s Youtube/TikTok world our attention span’s have been shortened greatly when it comes to reading, so I’ll try to make this as clear and succinct as I can.

This year has been challenging; let me try to explain how exactly. As you may already know, a few years back when Fervent Fire Ministries was born we also began heading in a new-ish direction. We truly felt the Lord tell us to stop the programs-focused ministry that I had been leading and directing for the past 11 years or so; and to begin heading in a new direction. Not necessarily a direction that leads completely away from meeting basic needs such as education, providing food provisions and so on . . . but to no longer be driven primarily by those needs. As you know in a third world country like Nicaragua you can go about meeting as many basic needs a person can and you will just never have enough time or resources to meet them all! Jessica and I love seeing others’ needs met! But as I mentioned in one of first blog posts as Fervent Fire Ministries in 2020, we were longing to see real lasting spiritual fruit from our efforts here in Nicaragua and up to that point we had to humbly acknowledge that we still were not seeing any.

In 2020, through brothers and sisters connected to The Last Reformation we learned how to properly share and explain the Gospel to others among many other encouragements and challenges we received! Many began hearing the Gospel clearly and completely for the 1st time and were being born again, set free from demons and sin; it was truly an active and beautiful time! In 2021 we spent most of that year delving deeper into discipleship and what that really looks like on a day to day basis; not just consisting of meetings and events, but living life with our brothers and sisters in transparency and humility. This was a great challenge for us with having so many born again in such a short amount of time; and sadly we also saw many fall away from their decisions of faith at their new birth. We have some really beautiful testimonies of lives completely turned upside down for Christ, sinful relationships made holy and so on . . . and these brothers and sisters are still walking with us to this day, praise God! But it’s always hard to see those who have made decisions to follow Christ fall away into sin or begin to deny Christ and His Gospel when confronted with the pleasures of this world or persecutions from those who are still blind to the truth.

I guess you could say that we have really seen the truth even more clearly of the parable of the 4 soils and how important it is to realize that all of us who are born again do begin as soil 4 (the good soil), but that if we are not vigilant and watchful over our spiritual lives the evil one can come in and sew something into the soil of our lives that will eventually choke the fruit-bearing life out of us. We have seen it happen too many times now unfortunately; so now more than ever we understand the importance of discipleship and we have been doing our best to be obedient in making disciples in 2022.

We became part of a new small group at the beginning of this year and in our small group is a family (pictures of the Brenes family above) whom we have been walking with now more intimately since February and have seen them grow so much through trials and challenges they have encountered. Through some bad financial decisions they made in their past they have had to lean on the family of Christ for support financially, spiritually, and physically at times and Jessica and I have felt super blessed to be able walk with them and share their load they are carrying as brothers and sisters in Christ. Through the donations we have received we have been able to help them move homes to get out of a rent payment they could no longer make; pay off school fees for their son; buy food provisions for them when needed and we have even been able to provide the husband of the family a job with us at FrutiVera (sweet corn business) to help provide for his family. Spiritually speaking, we have spent many hours in prayer and counsel with them, loving on them and sharing with them any bit of wisdom we can give them that may help them in their walk with the Lord and with others in the family of Christ. I do not share these things to boast in ourselves; but to show what God has done through your support of the ministry and our family! ☺️🙏 I (Michael) have been so excited and thankful to see the father of that family grow so much in character and leadership of his family and in our church family here in Managua. It truly is something beautiful to see when you witness God molding a man into His image!

The Folsom home has also been giving a place for another brother in the Lord (who is really like a younger brother to me) to live for the past 3 to 4 months as his aunt’s home where he was living before was no longer an option. Kenner is much more of a blessing than a burden to have in our home as our kid’s love him and he is such a help with them and with other things around the house. Kenner has been working hard for the past 3 months to earn his certification as a bike-mechanic at a brother’s bike shop close by and during those 3 months he was only being paid enough to cover food and transportation costs as it was an internship. We were thankful that our home could provide a temporary home for him as he worked through his internship and we could help him with food provisions as he has been able to eat at least two meals with us practically everyday during this time. He will soon be moving out to go move up into the “corn house” with the Brenes family and we are thankful that the Lord has provided a home for them all at little to no cost and it’s a spiritually healthy and active environment where we hope they will have more consistent fellowship to encourage and sharpen one another in the faith.

Back in March we were able to be a part of another Kickstart; an event where people who are interested in what the Christ-like life looks like and what it is all about can come and hear foundational teachings from the scriptures and also see healings and the power of God in action. 2 were born again as a result of this Kickstart and others saw and experienced healings for the 1st time through their own hands and prayers! In this Kickstart we had two brothers in our fellowship lead a teaching for the 1st time, so that was so good to see them become even more involved, not only receiving but being able to give back as well! In my small group that went out on one of the weekends to the streets to share the Gospel and heal the sick, we saw two people get radically healed of pain and swelling in their bodies due to chronic diabetes. We literally watched legs and feet which were very swollen revert to normal size and regain their normal color within minutes! It was wild and it was the 1st time the two sisters who were with me ever saw such a radical move of God through their own faith and praying hands! It really impacted them and as always for me was such a joy to see tears of joy running down the face of one healed of severe pain (the man in the picture was one of the two radically healed).

Recently we were able to come alongside another family in our fellowship and help to provide them with safe and secure living conditions, albeit simple conditions, as they moved out of the “corn house” as we like to affectionately call it, where we process and package our sweet corn, back into their old home where they were living last year. But . . . this old home/room needed much repair and was not in condition for them to move back in. Some brothers from our fellowship were able to come together with us and purchase some tin, cement, sand, rocks, nails etc. to fix up and expand their home for them to move back into. This took us 3 full days to accomplish . . . 3 full, hot, sweaty, and hard-labor days to get it done, but in the end it was and is so worth it! A few pictures of the house going up are below.

As you can see in the photos my dad got to be around for the 2nd portion of the reconstruction and he spent two long and hot days with me carrying up buckets of sand, dirt, and cement to put in the flooring and help wrap the house in tin. It was a doubly sweet experience for me to get to work like that alongside my dad and in doing it helping to provide a beloved family in our fellowship with better living conditions.

“El Patrón” as he is so affectionately called or as I like to call him “The Ford” has been a huge blessing to have in our arsenal these last 3 months or so as we have really been putting it to work. Back in January of this year we felt lead by the Lord to purchase this 1993 Ford F-150 2x4 Long Bed for $1,800. It needed a lot of work and we’ve put a good junk of change into it since then but it has been used from everything from hauling corn freshly harvested from the field, to wood and tin to build a home, hauling trash, transportation for those in our fellowship to and from gatherings, to moving families and their belongings from one place to another. . . . and so on. I have to be honest with you that it wasn’t an easy purchase for me because already owning 2 vehicles (which has been enough and a huge blessing) adding another made me a bit uneasy. I knew it would require an investment of time and funds, but I also just don’t like how it can look to others who don’t own a vehicle when they see us with 3; albeit 3 old vehicles (our small car is the youngest at 12 years old), but still . . . I sometimes doubted after buying it if we did the right thing. So, all that said, it has pleased me to see it used so much as we don’t have many trucks in the fellowship here in Managua and so being able to have one open to any and all needs of FrutiVera or the church in Managua has been a joy for me personally to see it put to use. I have said it more than a few times to my wife as well; that one thing I love about these old trucks is the bench seat. I can fit my whole family up there with me and the picture to the far right with my two boys asleep next to me on the seat has also been one of the highlights of El Patrón’s life with us so far!

So to you reading this, for taking the time, thank you! I really do appreciate it! If you pray for me or for my family I want to say thank you as well; there is no price to place value on a prayer made in faith and compassion for another! If you have supported us in the past, I also say to you thank you; for helping us provide homes for families, food provisions for the hungry, Kickstarts for the searching, discipleship for the new in the faith, economic support for those needing a helping hand financially. And obviously a good amount of support given to Fervent Fire Ministries simply supports my family and our ability to be here as an encouraging and light-bearing presence in Managua and wherever the Lord may lead us! It has never been something I take lightly, to receive financial support through the goodwill of others; so from the bottom of our hearts,

THANK YOU!

But this year it has felt more difficult to do so to be completely honest with you. I have not done as good a job as I should have with keeping everyone up to date with what we have been up to; but I guess one reason for that is that I don’t feel that much of what we’re doing is “picture worthy” if that makes any sense. Discipleship is often times a slow process and often times has many setbacks. I don’t think I’m the best in the 1st place about keeping up with a blog (something I aim to get better at) and the Lord about 4 years ago corrected me about posting on social media about the good things we’re involved in, see Matthew 6:1. So, I try to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading as to how much I share and in what way we are supposed to do so. So . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is that without having what many people consider to be “big news” to share I find it a bit harder to accept financial support. I don’t know if this is right or not to feel that way; a few donors have told me to relax and to trust that God is leading those to donate who He places it on their hearts to do so and to just accept it and be at peace. So I guess I am trying to take that advice these days. Sorry if this sounds like rambling; I just want to be totally honest with you!

Sincerely grateful and humbled,

Michael