
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
On Tuesday August 31st of 2004, God worked a great miracle in Nicaragua! The first graduation of the Chemical Recovery Ministry in Central America was celebrated by over 160 people!!! The first two graduates, Vladimir Gutierrez and Martin Diaz, were also appointed as the new Nicaraguan leaders of this powerful ministry. This ministry will help countless numbers of Central American people be freed from the sin of addiction to alcohol, drugs, and tobacco; for many, alcohol is just part of the culture. This year God spoke loudly of His will to change this!!
My name is Sergio Arguello and I serve as a Deacon in the Central Region of the Los Angeles Church. I was born on October 20th 1970 in Managua Nicaragua. My Father was able to get me out of the country during the revolution of 1979. My life changed radically as I arrived in the United States I now had every opportunity at my reach.
Unfortunately, I followed the same path as my father and started drinking on a consistent basis at 13 years of age. During the following 10 years I also used drugs on an almost daily basis; I hurt many people, specially my family and close friends. This also caused me a lot of emotional, physical, and psychological damage. God showed His incredible grace by allowing me to become a Disciple while attending California State University in March of 1994. God granted me not only the opportunity to repent, but also put on my heart a desire to help those who also struggled with addiction.
I thank God that my wife and I had the opportunity not only to be trained many years ago by Will and Rose Ashley, who oversee the work of the CR Ministry, but to be great partners in the gospel with them also. My wife and I have led the CR Ministry in the Central Region of Los Angeles for about 8 years now. Our monthly processing meetings have kept the Regional CR Leaders of The Los Angeles Church strong and unified as we continue to see great success in the area of recovery—to God be the glory!!
The CR ministry is basically a discipleship group which meets on a weekly basis, where we help each other through accountability and scriptures to stay clean, sober, and righteous before God. In this ministry there is no superficiality, we get down to the deep issues and great miracles occur. We speak candidly to each other in love with the word of God so the world and Satan does not drag us down the road of destruction which we had traveled before. For us, using or drinking again, even once, could be the difference between life and death, salvation or damnation; it is a serious issue!! During the last 9 years, my cousin, my second cousin and one of my best friends all under 30 years of age lost their lives due to the consequences of addiction, and one of them was a disciple!
During December of 2003 I received an e-mail from Wifredo Coello, who leads the church in Nicaragua. Wilfredo informed me how alcohol has really plagued the people of Nicaragua, including the disciples, and how desperate he was to get a Chemical Recovery Ministry group started. After much prayer and advice from the Ashleys and the leaders of the Central Region I decided to go to Nicaragua to start the CR Ministry. In March of 2004 my mother (a disciple since 1994) and I landed in Managua, Nicaragua to a warm reception from the Coellos and the Gutierrez family. I was saddened to see the condition of my country and the people, it was unbelieveably poor. The work started as soon as we touched down; we arrived at 12:30 on a Sunday, we got cleaned up and dressed and went directly to service where I preached a message on addiction, not just to substances, but to sin—we all could relate to addiction to sin. We invited all who struggled with addiction to drugs, alcohol and tobacco to our first CR group on Tuesday. We had 26 people present plus the church leaders, who would be trained to continue the work!! 26 disciples filled the living room of the Coellos’s home!! During the next 6 days we met another 2 times with the group and another 3 times with the leaders for training. I also had the opportunity to preach in Spanish 3 different times to the congregation and even taught the leaders some of the basic principles for effective discipling groups that we practice in CR. During the Next 5 months, the Gutierrez’s and the Coellos’s led the group faithfully.
I arrived in Nicaragua again in August to join in the celebration of the first CR graduation in Central America!! We had 127 disciples in attendance plus friends, family and children to witness this great miracle. We celebrated with 4 enormous and delicious cakes and an endless amount of soda. The first 2 graduates were Vladimir Gutierrez and Martin Diaz, Attorney at Law. They shared their testimony of how God worked through the CR Ministry to save and change their lives, it was incredible. These two brothers are awesome, they both have 3 children and are 39 years of age, they fought in the revolution together and grew up together. They are the possible future Elders of the Nicaraguan Church. Vladimir and his wife, Damaris, have been disciples about 5 years . Martin and his wife were converted by Vladimir and his wife about one year ago. These two brothers are highly respected in the fellowship and are the oldest married disciples in the church. Vladimir and Martin were also appointed during the graduation with their wives as the new leaders for the Chemical Recovery ministry. We hope to see 2 to 4 graduates every 5 months or so from this ministry in Nicaragua. Please keep them in your prayers. I am encouraged how God works through our weaknesses.
I plan to visit Nicaragua in June for the Central American Leadership Conference 2005 and speak to the leaders regarding plans to take CR to countries like Belize, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Please pray for the CR work to continue in these countries so devastated by poverty and addiction. Amen.
If you have any questions regarding the CR work in Nicaragua or other questions, feel free to contact me at
@
Thank you,
Your brother in Christ,
Sergio Arguello
Click
here to view more photos from the graduation.