Good morning everyone!
I hope you had a wonderful Independence Day celebration. We sure did. Besides enjoying family time, Nola and I went to the movie, Sound of Freedom, on the 4th, and we highly recommend it.
In our last couple of updates we have focused on the soccer project and our continuing efforts to follow up on the incredible harvest we experienced in April as over 600 people came to Christ. You received part 2 on the same day that I was in route to Guatemala for a follow-up trip. So this update will focus on that trip. Cesar Gonzalez and I wanted to revisit all the places we went to in April and strengthen our efforts to get new believers into small groups—most notably Futbolistas para la Vida soccer groups.
As we began to make our rounds, two things caused us to change our itinerary. Number 1, we realized that because of the (then) upcoming elections on June 25th, all our friends working in city halls that plan big tournaments were busy in campaigns for re-election. But a second and more significant thing caused us to change our plans. It all started in Monjas when we introduced a simple drill we use as a way to help people initiate spiritual conversations. To share that story, it’s going to require a little more setup. So, as has become our pattern lately when we have lots of pictures to share, we have listed the prayer requests first and then followed that with the rest of the story and more pictures.
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.)
Continue to pray for us as we 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 new believers. 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.
Continue to pray for our video team: Sam Swift, Selvinth Maldonado, myself, and others who are being recruited to join us in producing soccer-related discipleship videos. Before the end of the summer, we hope to launch the website with everything we have. And we hope to send two video teams to Guatemala and to Nicaragua this year for the purpose of shooting soccer video content.
Pray for Gloria Lopez and others who are using our connection drills in the schools in Monjas. (See story below!)
ENGAGE
If you know of any soccer enthusiasts or coaches who we might be able to interview for our videos, please let me know. And if you are interested in going on a mission trip this year, let’s talk! Even though we are putting a lot of effort into this soccer project, we still hope to have a couple of teams this year focused on cowboys and on our Kekchi friends starting churches in the jungle.
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 Some Stories and Pics!
On our first day after I landed, Cesar and I had the privilege of visiting Paola, the soccer player from Pueblo Nuevo Viñas, who broke her leg in the tournament in April. As you may remember, in treating the break, the doctors discovered a tumor that they were able to successfully remove. Both Paola and her mother expressed their gratitude to God that this accident just might have saved her life!
We had the opportunity to share an evening with the team from the Lions Club in Monjas. This group helped us with many of the logistics in putting on the tournament there in April. Here the first-comers to our meeting posed for a photo around the grill when we started prepping for a barbeque just outside the rodeo arena.
After the grilling, it didn’t take long for this group to enjoy a meal together.
After eating, we thanked everyone for their help and shared about our ongoing needs to help follow up with the children and adults who want to be a part of new Futbolistas para la Vida soccer groups. Cesar and I both wore our cowboy hats, because many from this community know us for our cowboy ministry too. In fact, this gathering took place in the meeting hall of the rodeo arena owned by the cattlemen’s association that we have worked with in the past.
To introduce one of the features of our soccer groups (or any Play. Story. Eat. group for that matter!), we did our wagon wheel drill that we use in our Be-the-Church training, where we give a pair of people two minutes to share what they are grateful for, what they are concerned about, and then pray for each other. With the clock ticking, in about 10 minutes it’s possible for each person to connect in a meaningful way with 5 other people.
On the right in this photo is Gloria Lopez, the president of the Lions Club. She is also an elementary school teacher and a dedicated follower of Jesus. When we did this drill, it so impacted Gloria that she mentioned it to her school principal the next day. And the following pictures are of her leading about 200 children in the same drill at school! We only found out about it after she did it!
Here Gloria is getting the kids organized into wagon wheels to do the activity.
Many of the children told Gloria that they really liked the prayer part, and Gloria told us it went so well that they plan to do this exercise every Friday morning for the rest of the school year!
Later on that same day, Gloria invited us to come to the school to meet some of her fellow teachers. Most are Catholics, and what amazed us was their unified opinion that this was one of the best things they had done all year! One teacher said that they thought that no matter what a person’s religious views might be, everyone was affirmed and listened to.
Cesar spoke to the teachers and thanked them for what they do every day. By the way, since then, the regional director of the elementary schools has invited Gloria to show other schools how to do what she did!
Because of Gloria’s contagious spirit, we changed our plans when she talked about her church and the fact that she believed her pastor would be supportive. In order to follow up on these contacts, I wound up spending a couple of days in the home of Gloria and her husband Rony while Cesar kept a family commitment back in Amberes. In this photo, Gloria led a Saturday night youth gathering in her church and had them do the drill as well! Once the pastor and I met, he invited me to speak the next day in their service.
This is Pastor Favio Ramirez, Gloria’s pastor. Not only is he an excellent communicator, he is a talented musician—playing multiple instruments and having an incredible voice. Here he is speaking at the youth event after playing drums for the band. When it comes to music for big events, Favio is willing and ready to help in our future soccer tournaments.
The following day, right before I spoke, Favio introduced a family from their church that was leaving to pastor a new church in another town. It just so happens that Cesar has contacts there who are believers but have no pastor. We believe that God may be up to something! Stay tuned!
One of the goals for this trip was to recruit pastors who have a heart for young people, and in particular soccer enthusiasts, to help us with the follow-up in Monjas. Here we are meeting with three pastoral leaders who have committed to helping with this project. The day after this meeting we had planned to do a training event, but a thunderstorm knocked out the electricity for 24 hours, and we had to postpone it!
The Soccer Harvest is truly Plentiful
While we continue to have people willing to help in this soccer project, we desperately need to have people trained to lead groups. And because of logistical issues in doing the training in person, we see that we absolutely must invest more time and energy in putting training online and using technology to call and walk potential leaders through the material when they are ready.
While most of the videos we have made have been done here in the U.S., we believe we need to send video crews to Guatemala and to Nicaragua to film our partners in action in order to make the website feel like all three countries are represented in what we hope will become a movement should the Lord continue to bless this endeavor.
Please pray for wisdom in all of this!
Congratulations on Reading the Whole Update!
Talk to you soon!
Steve
PS…Please pray for these two men speaking with Cesar. They are soccer coaches in Monjas and want to use their influence in getting new groups started.
