Maria Magdalena Herrera Zeas has maintained a difficult, but faithful ministry in Nicaragua for years with the families in the Managua city dump. That ministry was born 15 years ago this week. Her vision and God’s calling on her life began when she brokenheartedly watched a newscast on local TV. She saw pictures of the dozens of people who lived in the garbage of La Chureca. At that time, she felt God revealing a long-range plan for ministry to these suffering people, many of which had lived among the garbage for generations. She faithfully and humbly followed the leading of the Lord by walking the hour to the dump and taking soup from her own kitchen to feed the sick and starving children. As she fed them, so told them of God´s love and plan for them to live a better life. This eventually led to the Iglesia Nueva Jersualen (New Jerusalem Church) and later to the beginning of the Fe y Esperanza (Faith and Hope) elementary school.
God started working in Maria’s young life years before. She was born in Matagalapa, the northern rural area of Nicaragua, on November 21, 1971, to a farming family of 11 children. As an adolescent, she fled to Managua with two of her older sisters when military raids began in her village and extended family members and friends were killed. She taught herself to read from a Gideon New Testament that someone had passed along to her. She married at a young age and had two toddlers when her husband abandoned the family. Now years later, she and her two grown children Cesia and Jose and granddaughter Cesia Maria live in the village of Las Brisas, which borders the old La Chureca dumpsite.
By Dock Caton
(Stay tuned for Part 2)
Ginger Creek Missions 