About Nica Style Tours

Nica Style is located in Managua, Nicaragua. It was founded in 2008 by Joel and Stephanie Estrada.

My name is Joel, and I grew up in a very poor neighborhood of Managua called Las Torres, beside Lake Managua. I had a large family—one older sister, four younger brothers, and a younger sister—and as the oldest boy, when my father left I had to take on the responsibility of the man of the house, working to feed my family.

When I was nine years old, a missionary woman started a feeding program in my neighborhood, which made things a little easier for my family because we could eat there on a regular basis. There were many gangs in that neighborhood, and also a lot of drug use, but before I got dragged into that life, the missionary, Sandy Carter, took me into her home. She put me back in school, and about a year later she sent me to the United States. While there I lived in South Carolina with the Bradley family for about a year, and then with the Spires family for about another year.

Though I had not known any English when I went to the States, by the time I returned to Nicaragua my English was very good, so Sandy gave me a job as a translator in her ministry, working for mission groups that came down from the States. It was in this way that I met the girl who would become my wife. She is a beautiful and intelligent woman who was born in Wisconsin and grew up in North Carolina. She came to Nicaragua with a large medical team, having long felt the call on her heart to live as a missionary overseas, which has worked out wonderfully because now that we’re married she works full-time for Sandy’s ministry.

Nica Style Tours provides an income for our family and allows us to continue to volunteer our time with Sandy’s ministry, to help her do for other people what she has done for me, to give them the same great opportunities and show them the love of God.