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My first day during a recent trip to Nicaragua, I was walking the crater lip of Volcan Masaya, east of Managua, where the parched grasses and smoldering fumes induced a mild shock. I was numbered among a group of 12 who would be traveling around the capital city and its outskirts to meet the people, hear their stories, and learn about a man who'd started an organization that was revolutionizing their lives, self-made entrepreneur Keith Jaspers.

When one climbs a mountain, one expects to hear winds stirring, trees rustling, streams hurtling downward. One does not expect black ridges and toxic fumes that, when the wind is right, choke the life out of you. Spanish explorers called the gaping maw of Volcan Masaya the "gateway to hell."

Along the upper ridge where I walked, I saw a bright yellow bird alight in a knotty barren tree—a chocayos del crater (crater parakeet). I learned that defying theories of science and survival, this curious bird makes its home in the crater. One might call it a miracle: spirited bliss asserting itself amid inhospitable conditions. I came to understand Keith Jaspers's love affair with the Nicaraguan poor that way, as well.

Nicaragua's history could be likened to the harsh conditions of the volcano: Scarred by oppression of cruel dictators; driven to take up arms in revolution against them; disillusioned by failures and betrayals of those same deliverers; damaged by seemingly endless guerrilla conflicts in its highlands—contra versus Sandinista—neighbor against neighbor. Then alights Keith Jaspers, a fair-haired, ruddy-faced Missourian who gave up personal wealth to launch the Rainbow Network, a development agency that has spawned hope and possibility for Nicaragua's poor in their post-war days of peace.

	"People with money need to be concerned about the poor," says Jaspers, who is Missouri's leading hotel magnate.

In 1990 this combat-fatigued and economically desperate nation rallied its grassroots to unify, bury their arms, and hold free elections. The image of AK rifles raised in triumph faded from view and the rebuilding clawed forward. Then Hurricane Mitch devastated the region in 1998. In 2000 Nicaragua briefly surpassed Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. (Three quarters of the population live on less than two dollars a day.)

Hobbled by historical and natural tempests, the government has been unable to provide basic social services to the people. Rainbow's director in Nicaragua, Peter Schaller, says, "When people are scheduled for an operation, the hospital gives them a list of materials to bring before they can be served, things like gloves, gauze, and iodine." In some areas where water tables are too deep to dig wells, people must travel on foot for miles to springs or creeks. In one community, the municipal government provided a truck to carry water, but there was no gas to put in the truck.

Says Schaller, "Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) are providing the only beacon of hope for this country." The Rainbow Network, one of those NGOs, has had such an impact on this nation that, in a show of solidarity and support, Nicaragua's President Enrique Bolanos, along with several cabinet ministers, attended one of the ministry's housing project dedications last July in the hard-to-access northern mountainous region where poverty is most severe.

'For the least of these'
Keith Jaspers, his wife Karen, and their grown children jointly own the Jaspers Family Hotels—three in Branson and one outside St. Louis. Jaspers is the area's leading hotel magnate. For approximately 12 years during the 1980s and early '90s, when he was amassing such financial successes, he also spent about half his time as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. He'd come across the book Love in the Mortar Joints: The Story of Habitat for Humanity, by Habitat's founder Millard Fuller, and became so enthralled that he and Karen drove to Americus, Georgia, to meet the author face to face. He became fast friends with Fuller and served two terms as a Habitat board member, fundraising and working side-by-side with Jimmy Carter and Tony Campolo. "When you hang around people like Millard Fuller, Tony Campolo, and Jimmy Carter for a lot of years, that rubs off on you," he says.

Keith Jaspers takes his convictions about wealth and helping the poor from Jesus' parable in Matthew 25:40-46:

The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." They also will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?" He will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

	"The Rainbow Network gave me hope that God sends someone to each of us to give us hope in life." —Maritza Solorzano

"That's the part that scares me," Jaspers says, "the separating them out part. People with money need to be concerned about that. That doesn't mean you shouldn't make a lot. It just means you have to share it. You take what you need for your children and family. You provide for your employees. Then you reach out beyond that. If you've got what you need, why would you want a lot more? There are so many biblical references to working with the poor and helping the poor that if you believe in God and believe in the Bible, you have to believe that that's the way it is. Luke 12:20 says, 'To whom much is given much is expected.'"

Keith and Karen Jaspers personally underwrote Rainbow's funding at its inception in 1995 and did not solicit funds for the first three years. Then, launching the scholarship program to help young people complete high school, they asked members of their church to participate (at $22.00 a month) which, says Keith, "they jumped into real quick." But it wasn't until Hurricane Mitch devastated the region in 1998 that the big money came in. This galvanized Rainbow's present donor base, which has remained robust. It has grown from a meager presence in five rural Nicaraguan communities to branches in 72 villages, and more on the horizon. Their budget at the beginning was $80,000. In 2003, they spent $1.2 million.

In these villages, Rainbow sets up committees for education, housing, economic development (micro loans), and health care—their four targeted areas—and then recruits local people as volunteers. "For any program to work, the people themselves must pitch in, whether as a teacher at the school, or providing labor in a housing project, or doing the cooking and clean-up at a feeding center," he says. "They're going to build their own house. They're going to pay back the loans. If they visit a doctor, they're going to pay the doctor.

"We believe in hard work, dedicated work. We train volunteers to put in the hours and achieve specific goals. They're responsible for how they use their resources, whether it's cement for making a house, or books and pencils for the school, or sewing machines. When those goals are achieved, they take away a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. We don't do these things for them to have a hobby."

Jesus in disguise
Maritza Herrera Solorzano, 29, exemplifies one who, without Rainbow's intervention, would have been lost in poverty's shadows. Up until last year she thought she did not exist, or in any case considered herself more like an animal than a person. As an infant she was abandoned by her mother and left on the street. She was rescued by an old man, who raised her, but she never had a birth certificate, which in her mind invalidated her life. She has borne six children to a man who is not her husband (unable to marry without a birth certificate, in her thinking), and lives on a dusty patch of ground in a hovel the size of a walk-in closet that's made of wood slats and tin. Her partner can't work because of an injury he incurred a year ago. She boils beans over an open fire, which on a good day her children will eat twice. When there is no money to buy beans, Maritza joins her father-in-law in a hunt for armadillos to kill for food.

To make matters worse, she struggled through each pregnancy with unmanaged sugar fluctuations from diabetes, causing her to exhibit behavior likened to paranoia. For years what little medical attention she sought dismissed her case as hopeless and she received no treatment. Two years ago, Rainbow established a presence in her village and she came under the care of their doctor. "He told me I would be under control and that he'll be taking care of me and my children," she says.

Through Rainbow, Maritza has received medication to stabilize her sugar level and her children have been treated for malnutrition. They also participate in one of Rainbow's community-run feeding centers. Crowning this, her adopted father secured her a birth certificate this past year. That, along with the dignity bestowed through Rainbow, has made her believe, for the first time, that she exists. "Sometimes when I feel I am nothing and nobody is watching me, when I see the hand trying to reach, I see there is hope," she says. "Rainbow gave me hope that God sends someone to each of us to give us hope in life."

Keith Jaspers says, "Rainbow Network may have had the dream and the vision, but the people in Nicaragua have got to want it, they've got to work it, they've got to do it. And they do. I like to quote Mother Teresa. She said, 'The poor are Jesus in his most distressing disguise.' She said, 'You pray the work by doing it.' That's what our organization is about. Our work is our prayer."

For more information about the Rainbow Network, visit their website at www.rainbownetwork.org.

A Christian Reader original article. Wendy Murray Zoba's book Meet Me in Managua (Kregel) is due out later this year.

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