Featured Profile: David

Name: David Antonio Jimenez
Birthday: February 4
Favorite color: Blue
Current favorite song: Someone Like You by Adele (he won't stop singing it in the house. Seriously)
Favorite food: Chicken with rice and beans...Mmmmm...Gallo pinto!!

What do you like best about yourself? My smile
What would you like to change about yourself? My cheeks. Because people always make fun of them!

If you could live any where, where would you live: In heaven. That would be so good to live there. Of course, I also like living in cities. I'm a pretty fashionable guy :)

How many siblings do you have? 1 older sister and a younger sister and little brother.
What is your favorite childhood memory? When I met my father for the first time. I was 15-years-old. He had left for the United States to work when I was like 10-yeares-old and I had never met him. He had to come back to Nicaragua for a blood test and some other things, so I got to meet him.
Would you like to see him again? Yes. He lives in New York now, about 15-20 minutes from New York City. I would like to see him again some day.



Where are you from? Tipitapa, Nicaragua originally, but from here in Anonos, too.
How did you end up here? My grandma lives here in Anonos. I have other family here, too. Aunts and cousins. Well, it's a really long story, but I moved here in 2003. At the time I was working for a dental office. I assisted a dentist by making porcelain teeth for people. Porcelain and metal teeth. I worked in that for 6 years. I moved back to Nicaragua in 2009 after I came home one night and some one had robbed my house. They took everything. All I had worked for was gone. So I moved back to Nicaragua and was there a year and 6 months. I came back to Costa Rica to do the discipleship training school (Vida 220) with DeLynn (another missionary here) up in Heredia (a town about a 2 hour bus journey from here...40 minutes by car). That's another story, too. I met DeLynn at the Vineyard in Escazu. He came to Nicaragua with the Anonos people on the missions trips they do and I met him there again. I talked with him and decided to come to Vida 220.

What made you decide to go to the discipleship school, Vida 220? It was an answer from God. So I was working with the church in Managua and in Tipitapa. I had prayed to God for a change. To do something different. I had felt like there was something different for me. I told my mom about it and 5 minutes later I got a call from Vida 220, the discipleship school saying they wanted me to come. And my mom looked at me and was like "God must love you a lot". It was such an answer to prayer.

When did you accept Jesus in your heart? When I was 10 years old.

Why? I was in a small group with other kids. The teacher asked if there was anyone who wanted to accept Jesus in their heart and I was like "ME!!". I was so happy. It was a first love and it was so good. I had a boldness from that moment. I started preaching in my community in Nicaragua at 12. The people were like, "What does that little kid know", but then I started talking with them and sharing the gospel and they were   like, "How can this little kid do this?" But they were amazed but it was only God. 

Do you think those same people are surprised at where you are now? Yeah. People live so differently there than here. They have dreams, but they back away from their dreams. They never expect me to be a leader so young. And to still be a leader.
Where do you think you would be right now if you didn't know God? In a very dark place. Some where really, really dark.

How has God changed your life through your year at Vida 220? It was a good process. Living with unfamiliar people, such different people, in community. We had to share everything. It was hard for me, especially not knowing very much English to start. Most of the classes were in English. So God really stretched my faith. For me it was an opportunity to be trained.
 What is your goal for 5 years from now? I have no idea! I am trying to live in the moment. Some times I think about that far ahead, where I will be, etc., but at the same time I can't think that far ahead. Whatever God wants from me!
When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? An architect!
Would you still pursue that? Not now. Maybe something in dentistry, but not that.
What verse in the Bible really speaks to you? Revelations 3:20 "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." We have a part. We have to open the door. He then comes in and eats with us at the table. It was the first verse I learned when I was 9-years-old and I memorized it.
What do you like about Los Anonos? Nothing. 
I don't like it. I want to see change. I don't like it now but God is doing great things here. I want change for the community. Prosperity for the people. Better things for them. A normal life. Normal things. For them to have food and jobs. For them to be able to work and provide for their families. To see addictions broken.
What would you change about Anonos right now? The pride. Change pride for humility. Open their hearts for God. 
What will you do to work toward this change? Pray. And be an example for the people.

If God would undeniably answer one of your prayers right now, what would it be? When I was little, I used to ask God if I go to sleep tonight, could I wake up in a normal house with normal family and wake up and say my life had all been a bad dream. I would ask him that. If all people could have united families, normal families with normal lives.