From Nicaragua
Principles for Life and Mission
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Chapter 1
The Value of Family
Growing up in the small town of Brownsville, Tennessee, the county seat of Haywood County, family was very special. Great-grandparents, grandparents, Mom and Dad, aunts, uncles and a wagonload of cousins—we were a clan. The front porch of my grandmother May May’s little frame house on Church Street was the Cox clan’s gathering place around sunset on lazy summer days. Only two blocks off the courthouse square, we would gather on the front porch just to watch the people pass by while listening to my great-grandmother Nunn’s stories from her favorite rocking chair with the low hum of locusts filling the air.
Grandmother Nunn’s best stories were the ones passed down by her mother, Jennie Valiant Downing, as told from the same rocking chair a generation before to my daddy, Aunt Bette B., and Aunt Mary Lou. Jennie had moved to Tennessee from Missouri to be with her family for the remaining years of her life. That’s what you did in those days when times were hard. To make ends meet, four generations lived together in that little frame house on the hill.
Born during the Civil War in the border state of Missouri and having eight brothers and sisters, Jennie was provided with great material for her front porch stories. The stories she told with the greatest passion had her oldest brother, Col. John Alexander Downing, as the hero. They spoke of his bravery while he served with a cavalry regiment under the command of Major Benjamin W. Shacklett. Other stories portrayed John as the adventurer, searching for gold in the Mother Lode Country of California. The most fascinating story chronicled John’s travel with his friend and fellow Missourian, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is more commonly known today by his pen name, Mark Twain.
As Jennie’s story goes, John Downing and Sam Clemens boarded the steamer, SS America, in San Francisco for the first leg of an expedition to New York through the Isthmus of Nicaragua. The steamer’s Pacific voyage was perilous and filled with intrigue. Mark Twain, in a series of letters to a San Francisco newspaper, Alta California, chronicled the trip and described “a heavy storm - the heaviest Captain Wakeman has seen on this coast in seventeen years, except one - and the heaviest another old sea Captain (among our passengers) of twenty-eight years’ experience, ever saw in his life.” Twain was so relieved as they entered Nicaragua’s bay of San Juan del Sur, ending the Pacific voyage of the journey, that he wrote, the “bright green hills never looked so welcome, so enchanting, so altogether lovely.” The two Missourians and their traveling companions then began a twelve-mile journey by land with “equestrian accommodations” of saddle-horses, mules, and teams pulling mud wagons to Lake Nicaragua, where they were to take steamers across the lake and down the Rio San Juan into the Caribbean.Jennie’s version of the story is that somewhere in Nicaragua between two great oceans, John fell in love and remained. According to Jennie, her brother’s marriage into a prominent family prospered the Downing name throughout the land. It is recorded that Mark Twain continued his journey, eventually making port in New York Harbor.
Even after his death in 1906, John Alexander Downing lived on through the stories of his baby sister, Jennie Valiant Downing, who idolized him. Yet, with hard times and the span of being an ocean away, the Downings of Nicaragua were lost for nearly a hundred years. However, God is not a respecter of time or distance. You will meet them again.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
When I was just twenty-eight years old, I was diagnosed with cancer and given no hope. What I thought would be my end was just the beginning of a journey laden with miracles that took me far from my home in Tennessee. From Nicaragua: Principles for Life and Mission chronicles that journey. It is a story that begins with a love that God gave me for a place I had never been and for a people I did not know.
With nothing more than that love, I purposed in my heart to go to Nicaragua to stand with its people in their struggle to make a better life for themselves. Following that commitment, God made provision for the planting of a ministry there that has changed tens of thousands of lives, including mine. For me, a special part of that divine provision proceeded from a miraculous reunion with my Central American family whose patriarch, Col. John Alexander Downing, traveled to Nicaragua in 1866 with a fellow Missourian who later became renowned as one of America’s most famous literary icons.
Embedded in this extraordinary story of God events are principles for your life and mission.
La base sobre la cual se han fundamentado cada una de las palabras contenidas en las páginas de este libro provienen de mi amor y admiración por el pueblo de Nicaragua. Los nicaragüenses son gente muy orgullosa y patriótica con una rica herencia cultural. Dándole un gran valor a sus relaciones afectivas, son gente muy cariñosa y amable. Habiendo soportado muchos desastres naturales, disturbios políticos, guerras civiles y colapso económico, los nicaragüenses han demostrado ser muy fuertes, siempre llenos de esperanza. De esta maravillosa gente he aprendido muchas de las mas valiosas lecciones de la vida.
About the Author
Bill Cox is a classic example of how God can use a self-described “less than everyday person” to advance His Kingdom. Beginning with nothing more than just a conviction to go there, Bill provided the leadership required to establish El Ayudante, Inc. as one of the most influential NGOs serving Nicaragua. As León Mayor Tránsito Téllez presented Bill the Key to the City of León before a special called meeting of the city council, he publicly proclaimed that El Ayudante had won the hearts of the people through the ministry of its mission teams.
During the ten years Bill served as El Ayudante’s Director of Missions for Nicaragua, the NGO’s ministry was recognized by national leaders including President Enrique Bolaños and Aminta Granera Sacasa, Director General of the National Police. In addition, El Ayudante’s child protection center became recognized by the Ministry of the Family as a model for Nicaragua. As residents of Nicaragua for over three years, Bill, along with his wife, Teresia, represented the United States Embassy in Managua as consular wardens to the Department of León under two U.S. ambassadors.
Bill is a native of Brownsville, Tennessee where he served his community in numerous capacities including as an elected member of the Haywood County Commission. In 2002, the Cox family moved to neighboring Madison County to join like-minded families in planting Fellowship Bible Church of Jackson where Bill served as an elder. Today, Bill resides with his wife, Teresia, and their daughters, Rebekah and Jennie, in Cumming, Georgia close to their son, Walt, and daughter-in-law, Rebekah.