Nicaragua

A Man With A Vision

Nicaragua - March 21, 2006

I happened to be taking a small mid-day siesta two days ago in one of our favorite hostels to date in Granada, Nicaragua and noticed young man meandering around as if he was looking for something important. He walked into the room I was in and sat down and we began to chit chat about life and travel. After a few minutes of talking with Jacob and having the opportunity to share a bit of the vision for this trip (and discovering that we had both visited L'Abri in Switzerland recently), he looked at me and said "You're not going to believe this, but I left this hostel just 10 minutes ago but when I got about 2 blocks away, I felt God was telling me to turn around and come back here. I think it was to meet you."

Jacob is a very bright 25-year-old on his second trip around the world with his 16-year-old brother. From his travels and his passion for global missions, Jacob has been able to see the huge void that exists for traveling Christians around the globe. "It's a huge need to fill that void," he said "because the majority of those Christians that are traveling are the ones with hearts for missions and with a global mindset." It's detrimental to not have a network for them. He commented "Did you know at the moment there are only three Christian hostels in the world?!" That was a staggering statistic to hear, especially when taking into account the millions of travelers per year and the exponential influence a Christian hostel network could have around the globe. This is virgin land with much opportunity.

Jacob's vision is a big one. He desires to develop a global Christian hostel association (think the International Hostel Network meets the network/opportunities of YWAM with the sensitivity of art/culture of L'Abri) that would be an open door to all. Jacob hopes to start his first Christian hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the next few years. It would be a place for people of all walks of life, to rest in a clean, modern room, converse (or debate) over a great cup of coffee, chill out in the swag library complete with great books, music and DVDs, jump online on the Internet cafe, and participate in a topical discussion in the evenings. The hostel would also be a great hub for those desiring to participate in a community or mission projects or looking to get plugged into a local church.

If the association were to grow to a global scale it would have exponential future impact in the lives it would impact and inspire, especially when considering the millions of future leaders with a heart for travel and missions. Each Christian hostel would also give local churches in the area an immediate opportunity to be involved actively in global missions. As a result, an incredible global network could be developed collectively within the hostels and the churches to spread the gospel. A vision of this magnitude would play a huge part of changing and stretching paradigms. I believe there are many others out there (possibly even reading this) that share a very similar vision or can relate firsthand to what Jacob's passion is. If so, please drop us a line. We would love to be able to do what we can to connect individuals, businesses, visionaries and investors to see this come to fruition.

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