Guatemala Soccer Project Part 2!!! — Play. Story. Eat.

Guatemala Soccer Project Part 2!!!

Selvinth Maldonado and I welcome our friends in Guatemala to our first soccer video designed to give soccer enthusiasts their first steps in following Jesus and becoming a part of new Futbolistas para la Vida soccer groups. Behind the camera and creator of the backdrop is Sam Swift, one of the tech guys at Lenexa Baptist who also went to Guatemala with us last month.

Good morning everyone!

In our last update we told you about the incredible harvest we experienced in April as over 600 people came to Christ through our Guatemala soccer project. Today I want to share a little bit of what happened the following week, after our teams went back home, and how we have been responding since we got home.

Like our last update, we have listed the prayer requests first and then added more of the stories through the pictures that follow.

As you are reading this, I am likely in route back to Guatemala to continue to follow up and make preparations with Cesar Gonzalez for grouping the new believers into Futbolistas para la Vida groups. We will also begin preparing for future tournaments in two new cities.

10:02 PRAYER

(Pray Luke 10:2 each day at 10:02 am or pm that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into His harvest fields.)

  1. Pray for Cesar Gonzalez and me as we work this next week to organize groups from the harvest in Monjas, Pueblo Nuevo Viñas, Amberes, and Santa Cruz Naranjo. Pray that leaders for the soccer groups will emerge to help assimilate and disciple those who responded in April.

  2. Pray for us as we prepare for the next tournaments in San Andrés Sajcabajá and Jalapa. Pray for Marcos, José, Mario, Caleb, Abner, Alejandro, Fabiola, and others (shown in the pictures below) who are partnering with us.

  3. Continue to pray for our video team: Sam Swift, Selvinth Maldonado, myself, and others who we will have in our soccer-related discipleship videos. Pray too that we are able to effectively use the technology available to us to stay connected with those starting new Futbolistas para la Vida soccer groups.

ENGAGE

If you know of any soccer enthusiasts, or even tennis players (see pics below of the upcoming project in Jalapa!), who might want to go on a mission trip this next year, let me know!

INVEST

Thank you so much for your generosity. You have kept us moving and responding to the open doors before us.

Please let us know of any of your prayer needs.

Love y’all!

Steve

And Now More Stories and Pics!

Government Official Invites Us to Travel with Him

One of the stories we shared last time was of Marcos Ramirez, the national director of Conjuve, the Guatemala government’s youth issues department. Marcos, a Catholic by background, had prayed to receive Christ in our tournament in Pueblo Nuevo Viñas and had been so impacted by what we were doing, he invited Cesar and me to come with him to visit San Andrés Sajcabajá, a small town in the mountains. He was concerned, because the youth there have been succumbing to drugs and alcoholism.

Marcos Ramirez (on the right), the head of the youth issues department for the government of Guatemala, responded to the gospel message in Pueblo Nuevo Viñas.

Cesar and I met Marcos and his family outside of Guatemala City for breakfast and then followed them about 3 hours to San Andrés Sajcabajá. Marcos’ wife, Mariela (on the left) is an evangelical Christian and was very happy about Marcos’ decision. San Andrés is her hometown, and it’s where Marcos’ grandparents and other family members are from as well. Edwin, Marcos’ dad (on the right), joined us for the day trip.

There were several beautiful places to stop and take pictures on the drive.

San Andrés Sajcabajá is an indigenous name that is one of the most difficult towns to pronounce! (If you say it right, it sounds like San Andres Sash Ka Ba Há). Here you can see the spelling on the sign in front of their city hall.

Marcos took us to city hall and introduced us to José Gressi (blue shirt on the left), his cousin who is in charge of sports projects in the region, and the vice mayor (center) of San Andrés Sajcabajá. From this point on, José was our guide, because Marcos had to get back to Guatemala City.

After our meeting at city hall, José took us out the front door of the city hall and to the town square. Here, Cesar and José are seated in front of the Catholic Church building where José tells the story of how back in the 1980s and early 1990s, this whole region was in the middle of Guatemala’s civil war. For a time, the government had seized the church and used it as a base of operations. Just this past year, hundreds of skeletons were found buried under the church where, presumably during the war, government troops had killed communist sympathizers and buried them under the church. Today, few from the town have any memory of that time.

On our visit around town, we stopped at the Mayan community center where they house the statues of saints that they use in religious parades at various times of the year. Traditionally, many indigenous communities have syncretized Catholic beliefs with Mayan beliefs.

Another Divine Appointment

After the introductions at city hall, Marcos had to get back to Guatemala City and left us with his cousin, José Gressi, who is part of the city’s sports department. He began to tour us around town, and when we were driving to the soccer fields, he was talking about the problem of drugs and alcoholism among youth. On a street corner a young man was talking with another, and José pointed him out, “Right there is a good example of this. Mario is an excellent soccer player, but he has had difficulty staying sober.”

“So he is the type of person we want to reach?” Cesar asked. “Would he want to talk to us?”

“Probably,” answered José. Immediately, Cesar put on the brakes and shifted the Toyota pickup into reverse to back up to the corner where this young man was.

“I hear you are a really good soccer player,” Cesar said with the window rolled down. “Would you like to go with us to look at the soccer fields?” Recognizing José, who he had played soccer with before, he immediately agreed and jumped into the back seat with me.

This is Mario Mendez, who José had mentioned was a prime example of a young man who is an outstanding soccer player, but who has struggled with alcohol. Mario is in his early 20’s and was born in Honduras, but when his mom died he came to Guatemala to live with his father who was from San Andrés Sajcabajá. Mario plays on a semi-professional team in the region and is widely known for his soccer prowess. During our time with him, countless people waved at him, calling him by name as we drove around.

After we found out that it was his daughter’s birthday, we helped Mario pick up a piñata and a couple of gifts while we were driving around.

After we shared a little bit of what we were doing and how we had just come back from a week of soccer tournaments, we asked Mario about his religious background. His mother was from Honduras, and his dad was from San Andrés. For most of his adolescence he lived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with his mother. There, he was part of a dynamic youth group of a new church and he had committed his life to Christ. After his mother passed away, he moved to San Andrés with his father. Soon he realized that his soccer skills were better than most in his new home, and he quickly became a soccer sensation. With the notoriety came many invitations to celebrate with alcohol. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the same youth group to lean on here, and he succumbed to many of the temptations.

After seeing some of the fields, we stopped to get a bite to eat for lunch. Mario told us that he would gladly work with José and a team of people to bring the tournament to San Andrés. We agreed to meet again the following morning for breakfast and to talk more, since Mario needed to get back to help with his daughter’s birthday party. We also agreed to an invitation from José to join him at the hot springs later that evening for a boiled egg picnic!

San Andrés is known for it’s hot springs that flow into a nearby river. Here José wanted to meet with us to eat boiled eggs, beans, and tortillas.

At one of the sources of the hot springs, José drops the sack of eggs into the water to boil.

After fishing the sack of boiled eggs out with a stick, we ate together.

The next morning we continued our conversation when both José and Mario met us for breakfast at our hotel.

As I got up early to work out, the sun highlighted a cross on the mountain overlooking San Andrés. Many towns in Central America have crosses on mountains overlooking their towns. Most of these were placed there by dedicated Catholic priests and their parishioners.

While we ate, we talked about the project and about some of our methods for sharing the gospel. After learning about the message of the colored soccer ball, Mario repeated what he remembered of the meaning of each color. Incidentally, a little after I took this picture, Mario prayed a prayer of rededication to the Lord and wants to not only help in our soccer project but also to offer whatever gifts and abilities he has to serve God.

Mario shows some foot skills and passes the ball to José.

When we talked about needing to build some soccer goals for the project, Mario took us to a friend who has a welding shop and who is also a soccer enthusiast.

One of the places Mario wanted us to see was this ancient Mayan ruins just outside of town.

Part of the ruins is this pit where an ancient soccer type of game was played. While they used makeshift balls and rocks, in some cases heads of sacrificed individuals were purported to be used as well!

Retracing Cesar’s Past

After taking us to the Mayan ruins, we bid farewell to Mario. Instead of heading to the main road, Cesar wanted to go straight into the mountains on a dirt road and see if he could find some places that he had visited back in the 1970s. For almost 10 years, Cesar worked as a public health official, and for several months he had been assigned to walk through this mountain region to talk to individuals and leaders about common health problems and deliver medications to nip any communicable diseases in the bud before they spread. So we took part of a day to drive this mountain road.

If we didn’t have a four-wheel drive vehicle, we would have had to turn around multiple times. It took us 5 hours to go 43 Kilometers! That would probably average us at about 5 miles an hour!

When traveling through this part of the country, there are no restaurants or hotels, so we stopped at houses like Cesar did back in the day and asked this woman who was sowing if she would fix us a meal! And she did!

The dirt road snaked its way through the mountains. Eventually we made it to the other side.

About the only thing we accomplished in this excursion was realizing that Cesar was in great shape back in his day! But once we got through to the other side, we had to make a decision.

Visit Some Cowboys or an Old Friend?

There’s a country song that has a line in it about flipping a coin to figure out where to go next…“heads Carolina, tails California…” And that almost describes our dilemma.

When we got out of the mountains and hit the main road, Cesar pointed out that if we went left we could go and visit some of our cowboy friends. If we went right, we would be on the way to where some friends we hadn’t seen in a long time lived and where we had done ministry years ago.

“I feel like we need to check in on Gregorio in Guastatoya,” Cesar said. “What do you think?” Through the years, when Cesar has had a hunch like this, I have learned to go with it. I could probably write a book on some of the amazing things that happened when we went with his gut!

“We haven’t promised our cowboys that we were coming,” I said. “So let’s go see Gregorio.”

Cesar and I met up with Gregorio and his wife, Joanna, in front of their tire shop in Guastatoya, Guatemala. We picked right up where we left off many years ago!

Sure enough we caught up with them at their tire shop and quickly began laughing about all kinds of misadventures together. When I had stayed at their house 20 some years ago, their kids were little. Now of course the kids are grown, and Caleb, one of their sons, has been a youth leader of a group of about 130 youth. Without telling you the whole story, it became obvious why we needed to see them. Caleb has some kids in their group that could help us with drama and music in our next tournaments. Stay tuned for more of this story!

Next Big Soccer Tournament in Jalapa!

After we left Gregorio, we drove about an hour to Jalapa, where we were scheduled to meet with Abner, a sports leader with Conjuve who wanted us to come and evaluate whether we could do a soccer tournament there. As it turned out, we spent one evening and one morning evaluating the fields, and what we saw blew us away!

Cesar and I met with Abner (center left) and his boss Alejandro (left) in Jalapa to visit the city’s sports facilities. Abner was with us in Monjas doing the soccer tournament there and had insisted we needed to come to Jalapa. Abner is a dedicated follower of Jesus and has been doing soccer evangelism on the streets with some guys in his church in Jalapa. When I walked up to meet them, Alejandro smiled and noticed my bright orange shirt. I earned that shirt last year by surviving a men’s retreat in the jungle. “When did you become a Legendario?” he asked, knowing where my shirt came from. I told him, and Alejandro went on to tell me that he went to the same retreat the year before and that it had changed his life!

This is one of three large fields available to us.

They had large multi-use courts as well.

An olympic sized pool

They even have this nice baseball field.

The next day we met up with Fabiola (left), the tennis coordinator, and Cesar, being a huge tennis fanatic, set up a future tennis project!

With Cesar and I are the leaders of the sports facility in Jalapa. All are excited about us doing a tournament there!

To quickly sum up the two days in Jalapa, we have a huge door of opportunity open to us to use any of the facilities the city has. Also, Abner will help us connect with several churches doing soccer evangelism in Jalapa. We believe that we could train them and partner with them both in the execution of the tournament and in the follow-up of those who might respond to the gospel message at a tournament in Jalapa. In addition, because of the proximity of the tennis courts to the soccer fields, we plan to include tennis in this next project as well! This week, Cesar and I will be spending more time there to evaluate it all, and we believe we will schedule something there soon. Please pray for wisdom in all of this!

Congratulations on Reading the Whole Update!

Love y’all!

Steve

PS…Here’s our soccer video crew!

From left to right are me, Sam Swift, Selvinth Maldonado, and John Maldonado. After making a video together, we went out to an El Salvador restaurant here in the Kansas City area to celebrate!