Leaving the Lake

Today, we were sad to leave the beautiful Lake Atitlan. We sang happy birthday to Pierce at breakfast with birthday candles on breakfast bread.  Then, we loaded trucks to drive to the homes that were built this week to be dedicated.  It was such an amazing experience.  The pastor of the local church came with us to the house and all of the families that were going to live in the house were there.  We spoke with them, prayed with them and hung a plaque in their house that said "God bless this home". These homes were just cement block homes, with cement floors.  They were an upgrade from their bamboo or tin homes with dirt floors.  This experience brought most of our team to tears.

When we finished seeing all of the homes, we at lunch and then boarded our bus for our 3+ hour ride to Antigua up and down mountains and on some very bumpy roads.  Alayne and Joel have not had the best stomachs today, so we tried to sleep as best we could.  Pray for us, we are trying to just power through the rest of our time here.

We made it to Antigua, had some dinner and are ready to do some hard bargaining tomorrow in the markets.  We will also have a church service with our team tomorrow as well as an end of the trip dinner.

Here are some pictures from today.

Final day of ministry.

Wow!  I am not sure if I can put into words a description of today.

We had a great day of ministry. We had tournaments of games with the kids all day.  At the end, we handed out trophies, soccer shoes to the winners.  We also handed out jerseys, and certificates to all the kids!  This brought me to tears, to see donations from Eden Prairie bring such big smiles to the kids faces, something new, a gift, just for them.

 Today was a day of "goodbyes". We had to say goodbye to the kids that we had been working with all week, goodbye to the beautiful cities that we had been in, goodbye to the beautiful Lake Atitlan (our last boat ride), and goodbye to the wonderful group of coaches and staff that we had been working with all week.  These guys have a passion for the Lord and a passion for soccer and teaching kids about Jesus through soccer.

Tomorrow we will go through some of the houses that were built this week and pray over them and dedicate them.  It will be another big day.  Then we will head to Antigua for a some decompression before heading home.

I am so happy to be able to bring our family on this trip.  It has been an amazing experience for all of us!

Day Four.

Today, Alayne and Pierce went with the computer ministry to visit two computer labs that had been set up in previous years to see how things were going and if they had any questions or needed help.  These computers had been donated and set up in a room for students to use in schools.  If there are people to maintain these computers, the trip is usually pretty successful.  If there are people that don't know how to care and maintain the computers, it is frustrating.  Most of the computers are well maintained, but we saw both the good and the not so good today.  It really showed me that education is the first step to helping anyone help themselves.  Here are some pictures from today (the camera went with Alayne and Pierce)

We also had a big celebration service tonight at the church here in Santiago.  Lots of singing, preaching and gift giving for the 20th anniversary of this trip.  So much cooperation and love here.  You can just feel the importance of the relationships.  We are so happy to be a part of this!  And yes, even the gringos got up on stage and sang a few songs!  Pierce and Joel even accompanied!

More soccer, more kids, more fun!

We have been enjoying getting to know the kids that come to these camps everyday.  They recognize us and are having a so much fun.  We get to love them and just play with them.  This has been like 10 hours of Spanish gym class (with a soccer focus!). We are exhausted, but have been having lots of fun speaking Spanish and learning about the culture and how God works here!

One funny story from today:  every morning we take a boat across the lake to San Pedro.  This morning, there was a man who owned a different boat that had broken down.  He asked the guys on our team to help him pull the boat out of the water to fix it.  I snapped a quick picture as they quickly dropped all of our equipment bags to help pull this boat out of the water.

Here are some pictures from today.

Second day of soccer

Today was a great second day of ministry.  Everyone was a bit more understanding of the routine and what was going to be happening.  We all saw some of the children from yesterday, that was fun and brought lots of smiles and hugs!  We had a longer lunch break, so we stopped at our hotel and the kids were able to swim in the pool for a bit before heading out to the next soccer clinic.  We were again greeted with smiles and hugs as the kids came in for the next camp.  We have had fun and again have learned so much about how God works in other cultures.  Here are some pictures from today.

First day of soccer

This morning was early, we had to be on the dock at 7:30 to get on the boat to cross the lake to go to San Pedro.  This was the city that we stayed in two years ago, it was fun to see it again!  We wound our way through the streets and came to a gymnasium.  The "sports" teacher of the school came and unlocked the door for us.  We brought soccer balls, cones, and other equipment with us and set it all up to runs some soccer drills with the kids.  We weren't sure what the day would look like as this is a new group starting to work with kids through soccer.  Although not a surprise that kids in Central America love to play soccer, it was fun to see an instant connection across cultures and our kids had no problem jumping in and playing with the local kids.  And that's what this Bridge builders team is about, building bridges between people regardless of where they are from, all in God's image that surpasses our own boundaries and barriers.

The team that is leading the soccer camps is a Guatemalan group that is working to start a local ministry reaching out to help children. Another great aspect of being part of this is that we are helping to establish credibility for their group and support them as they work in their own country.  It's great to see our efforts this week are more than just a week playing with kids but making a longer term impact by helping the soccer team follow their own path to serve their own people.

It was a long day of running (ok, mostly playing), but 10 hours straight has worn us out.  Ready for bed we should all sleep well tonight so we can be ready again tomorrow!

Training Day

Today awoke refreshed (sort of with all of the wildlife that was quite active all night).  We had wonderful blue corn pancakes with our breakfast.  We had a wonderful service by the lake, and then live streamed the church service from home (we are all so hooked on this Daniel series)!

We met the men today that we are going to be working with us in the soccer camps.  Most of them speak no English so the kids are really getting their Spanish practice in, and Joel and i are getting very good at charades!  The kids ran through some practice drills like the ones we will do with the kids throughout the rest of the week.  Two of the men used to play professional soccer on Guatemala.

We will be teaching two camps all week.  One in San Pablo and one here in Santiago.  They are approximating 80 kids at each of the camps.  It is going to be a hot busy day tomorrow.  Thank you for your prayers!  We are feeling them!

God's Provision

We started out at 2:30 this morning.  We have been praying for God to provide a final signature in customs for all of ministry supplies to be brought into Guatemala, and had continued to hear that we may not have our ministry bags until Wednesday.

We all made it to the airport safe and sound with all of our personal and ministry bags.  Our family had 4 personal bags and 7 bags of ministry supplies to keep track of.  The mail is not reliable here, so we just bring all of the bags into the country with us, but clearing though customs we still up in the air.

We also had a 40 minute layover in Atlanta, and with 30 people that could be a bit of a snag if we had to change terminals....

After getting all of our bags checked at MSP, the ticket agent looked at our leader and said "no charge".  Wow!  We had all of the second bag fees waived for our entire team!  Amazing!  What a blessing!

When we arrived in Atlanta, we got off the plane and saw that our gate to Guatemala was the same gate that we had just arrived!  Plenty of time! Again!  Gods amazing provision!

We made it safe to Guatemala, got all of our bags off the luggage carousel and brought them through the customs line.  No signatures, just a look at the forms and we were through!  All of our ministry bags went through without a hitch!  Again God's provision!

We took a long, bumpy bus ride to Santiago Atitlan and we were greeted with the best Guatemalan cuisine!  Ahh fresh guacamole, tortillas, and so much more!

It has been a long, tiring amazing, day!  God is good!

Good night!