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