A Special Place

At nine a.m., I ride with Daniel  and Gloria Boniché to their church in northern Managua.

Daniel is director of the Nehemiah Center. Gloria is an architect and a teacher trainer.

They show me the church they pastor together. A sanctuary banner displays the church mission for 2010: “We speak, we walk, and we believe, because the eyes of the Lord are over us.”

Bonichés  tell me about reaching out to the poor neighborhood to the south of the church in the past five years, and  now it has less alcoholism, abuse, and danger.

Sundays, 500 people worship here. Monday through Friday, movable panels are pulled out, and the church becomes a school for 300.

A few years ago, when the school outgrew the church, the congregation added adjacent classroom space.

Gloria designed both the balconies and the adjacent classrooms. Nearing noon, Gloria invites me to their home. “I want to show you my special place,” she says, voice warm with love.

“Ah, an architect-designer,” I think. “Of course—she loves her home.”

We enter, but she provides no house tour. She takes me directly to the second floor, up rough cement steps, thinly painted walls, through an open-air walkway, to a pair of paneled  doors.

She stops, hand on the door, turns back to me, and says, “I used to climb a ladder and lie on the roof to be alone with God. Slowly, as God provided and allowed, we have made this place.”

She opens the doors to the Boniché  prayer room: tiled floors, elegant wood-patterned walls, graceful windows, and an altar—a wooden stand with a container of papers. She shows me the papers— pages of church needs dotted with  post-its noting God’s answers, other papers with penciled plans.

Here they meet for family prayer, sometimes kneeling, sometimes sitting.

Here when Gloria is seeking an answer to prayer alone, she lies prone before the altar.

Here their daughter Irena, 13, dances praise to God.

It is by far the most beautiful room in their home.

Used only for prayer.

A very special place, indeed.