Why a Fence?

Why a security fence?

Two years ago, in 2009, one week before the Construction Mission Team arrived to work on the security fence around the boy's home at the edge of the orphanage complex property, a scary event happened in the middle of the night.

Two men, armed with machetes, crossed onto the orphange property from the east, and were walking in the dark of the night directly towards the villa which houses the babies and the youngest children. Inside the building was only one missionary.

The orphanage at Los Cedros hires a security guard armed with a rifle to patrol the twenty-two acres of the property all night long. Fortunately the security guard discovered and confronted the two men. The guard radioed the local Nicaraguan police department, and adivsed them of the intruders.

The police arrived and apprehended the two armed intruders. The police also told the intruders that the next time they entered the property that they, the police, were giving the guard their permission to shoot them.

The orphanage was lucky that night. For having arrived at the orphanage just two days earlier was a tiny one week old baby ... "Little Carlos".

Stealing babies, particularly from orphanages such as this, is an unfortunate occurence at orphanages in Nicaragua. This orphanage has been lucky in that to date no such thefts have successfully occurred.

However, next to hunger, the next greatest need in Nicaragua, particularly among the poor, is security.

Particularly in the more rural areas, as are the orphanages in both Los Cedros and Jinotega.

The construction team arrived one week after this incident. Upon hearing of this close call, the construction team started wondering ... what if?  Thus, after finishing their work in 2009, and while driving back from the airport in Chicago to Wesley United Methodist Church (www.wesley-umc.com) Bloomington, the team began discussing returning to Nicaragua and beginning work to enclose the entire twenty-two acres which comprise the orphanage compound at Los Cedros.

Sandy Carter, the main missionary over the orphanages in Jinotega and Los Cedros was contacted, and she readily agreed that erecting a security fence around the orphanage compound would be a tremendous benefit, providing security to the babies, the young children and the missionaries at the orphanage.

And thus was born "the Great Fence Project"!