ON MISSION NICARAGUA...From Ashes to Beauty (a taste of Maria's story)

New Jerusalem Church, Guadalupe

Pastora: Maria Magdalena Herrera Zeas

Maria was born in the northern rural area of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, to a farming family of 11 children. She moved to Managua where her husband abandoned the family when their two children were toddlers. As a child, Maria lived through village military raids and murders of extended family members and neighbors. She taught herself to read from a Gideon New Testament someone had passed along to her. Nearly 17 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 Managua city dumpsite, La Chureca.  Maria has maintained a faithful ministry in La Chureca 16 years.  Her ministry vision began there when she was watching a news cast on local TV. She was heartbroken to see the pictures and reports of the dozens of people who lived in the garbage.

                                          La Chureca, Managua City dump prior to 2010.

New Jerusalem Church

 At that time, she felt God revealing a long-range vision for ministry to these people. She faithfully and humbly followed the leading of the Lord by bringing soup from her kitchen and feeding the sick and starving children and telling them of God’s love for them. Shortly after, she began teaching the same message to the youth and adults.  This quickly led into the fledgling Iglesia Nueva Jersusalen (New Jerusalem Church) and eventually to the beginning of the Fe y Esperanza (Faith and Hope) elementary school.


 It has always been Maria’s passion to teach about God’s love and to educate children toward a better life. Ginger Creek discovered her ministry in 2008 and came alongside her to assist in the development of the church and school. The 47 acres of open garbage was documented as one of the largest in the world. In 2010, the government of Spain took notice and donated millions of dollars in humanitarian relief to raze the site, build a modern recycling plant and construct hundreds of new houses adjacent to the site for the 258 families from the dump plus hundreds of refugees from recent floods. Ginger Creek began assisting in a building program while La Chureca was still an open garbage site. In February 2012, the New Jerusalem Church and Fe y Esperanza II school were completed.

Class in New jerusalem elementary

The school officially opened with four grades and 215 students, the maximum number of students she could handle in the new building.  The New Jerusalem church and school are located in new village of Villa Guadalupe at the boundary of the dumpsite.

Villa Guadalupe replacing La Chureca

To her credit, Maria helped local pastors found four other churches--Barrio Pantanal begun in 2008; Barrio Carlos Tellez 2009; Barrio Carlos Nuñez; and Barrio Villa Carmen in 2010, which is 47 kilometers from Managua on the highway to Leon. Also, the pastor of a nearby church in Acahualinca which was destroyed in the Lake Managua flood of 2010 has become the Pastor of Evangelism at New Jerusalem.

Having a passion for education, Maria also began theological training in her modest home. It quickly grew to become the New Jerusalem seminary and moved to a borrowed neighboring church facility until the New Jerusalem church building was completed.  She graduated the first three-year group of seminarians from this school in April 2012.

First graduation of New Jerusalem seminary 2012

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favorand the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who morn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beuty instead of ashes. 

The last four pictures represent  beauty that replaced the ash heap.