“My roommates, Evaristo Sánchez and Lorenzo Obregón, and I decided to learn English together. Then one day Evaristo came home from the market waving a book and saying: ‘I’ve found an American who’s going to teach us English!’ Of course, that was not the ‘teacher’s’ intention, but it was what Evaristo had understood. So when the appointed hour arrived, we three young men were happily expecting an English lesson. The ‘teacher,’ missionary Wilbert Geiselman, was pleasantly surprised to find such eager ‘Bible students’ awaiting him, book in hand.”

By the end of that year, his two roommates were also baptized.

Now 83, Evaristo Sánchez joyfully recalls those early days. “At first,” he says, “we didn’t have a place for our meetings. But we were only a few, so we met where the missionaries were lodged. Later, a two-story house was rented, and 30 to 40 of us met there regularly.”

These three young men were the first Nicaraguans to accompany the missionaries in the ministry, first in Managua and then in outlying areas. At the time, Managua, with about 120,000 people, was smaller than it is now. The only paved area was a section of 12 city blocks in the center of town. “We traveled on foot,” reflects Evaristo. “There were no buses, no paved roads, only train tracks and oxcart trails. So depending on whether it was the dry or the rainy season, we were deep either in dust or in mud.” But their efforts were rewarded when 52 persons attended the Memorial in April 1946.

Right: Dora and Evaristo Sánchez