Becoming a Young Woman of God being used in Nicaragua

Found a cool story about Jen's book "Becoming a Young Woman of God" via Google Alerts (ht to Kirk).

Let me introduce you to "Maddie" a 17-year old college student who is spending six months or 171 days "living and teaching in rural Nicaragua for Project Chacocente."

She is working for an organization called "Out of the Dump" that "moves families from the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua to the clean air and fertile soil of rural Masaya, where the people learn skills for living independently. Chacocente is a non-profit, integrated project that aims to transform people, not just give them food and/or housing."

In Maddie's blog she talks about how she was given Jen's book to lead some of the girls through a Bible Study and the tension of translating it culturally.

"I got the book from Omar the first day I got here, and most of it looked great.. the first chapter talks about our culture and what it expects of women, how our culture sees women, and how we can be who God wants us to be. All good stuff. There was, of course, the fact that the entire book is in English, so I'll have to translate what I want to get across to them, which will be a challenge. But what struck me as an even greater challenge as I read the book was that this was written for middle-school girls in the United States, which wouldn't be a problem besides the language.. except that it's all about culture. So the culture it's talking about is American culture. My challenge is finding some way to translate this culture into something that applies to them.

And actually, maybe what I'm talking about is not pop culture.. the stuff the book is referencing when it talks about how ¨the media¨ portrays women. What bothered me was the part about choices.. choosing who we want to be, the kind of careers we will have, etc. that I don't think fully translates into this culture. Because as much as I want to believe that these girls will have more opportunities than their mothers had and that I can make a difference in that, deep down I know that these are choices that have already been made for them. I want them to have dreams, but I'm not sure that their world can support them. I fear that there is not much I can do to guarantee that they can be all they can be, because of their educational level, economic status, and the world they are inheriting. Chacocente is helping with the first two as much as they can, but I know that it will take much more than a bible study to change the world situation they are already growing up in."

Wow. When I was 17, I wasn't dealing with anything like this.

Maddie brings a great question. And while Jen's book was written with the mindset of American Teens, even those dear sisters living in the garbage dump won't experience the life Jesus promised without finding thier identity in God and having a relationship with Christ.

Of course, I think the harder question we deal with is, what is God's dream for those girls? What if God's dreams for them aren't what we assume they are?

Join us in praying for this amazing 17 year old who is doing something amazing with the lives of people in Nicaragua. You can read the rest of her her post here.