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Building a School for Special Needs

July 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Sidewalk

Sidewalk
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Pouring the wheelchair accessible sidewalk to connect the clinic and the school buildings!

A team of 21 hard workers from Be The Change Volunteers joined ASELSI to help open the Jesus’ Little Lambs School for special needs students on the outskirts of Chichicastenango, Guatemala.
I had the privilege of coordinating the team from the Guatemalan side of things and getting to see so many projects completed while the team was here.
The team:

  • hand dug about 100 yards of trenches and installed rain and waste water piping
  • installed rain gutters
  • Installed drainage boxes to prevent flooding
  • built a retaining wall
  • painted the interior of the school
  • made and installed curtains
  • built a fence
  • worked with the special needs students to plant an interactive flower garden in the school yard
  • poured concrete to prevent erosion around the school
  • poured cement for a wheelchair accessible walkway to connect the clinic and therapy building with the school
  • made three large tables to be used in the classrooms

While this team was unique in that the team members were not from a church and came from several different states, they worked together with willing hearts to get the school ready for classes.

By the time they left, they had moved the classroom from a small storage room into one of the large classrooms with fresh paint on the walls. The kids and teachers were delighted to hold their first lessons in the new school building just a few days after the team left!

Besides the work project on the school, the team also visited homes and delivered much needed food supplies, served 60 meals to men and shoe shine boys in the center of town, and taught English in a local Guatemalan middle school.

After all the experiences the team shared here in Chichicastenango, one of the team members who is not a Christian said that the experience made them re-think their beliefs…
“I was not religious/spiritual before the trip,” they wrote. “I believe in a God but not necessarily a religion. After seeing how powerful prayer is to  some, I may rethink my  beliefs.”

Our prayer is that this team member and others will not become “religious” but know real relationship with Christ and continue reaching out to help others!

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Good Report!

March 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 

Over the last month of ministry we’ve ministered with teams from the United States in many ways: clinics, construction, evangelism outreaches, school programs, and more! During a home visit a family of nine accepted Christ, at a hospital visit, five people gave their lives to the Lord, and at a feeding program one man turned his troubled life over to Jesus!
This isn’t about us, but about the Holy Spirit who is drawing people to Christ! Praise the Lord for ready hearts!

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Shiny Shoes and Clean Hearts

February 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Distributing tickets for the event

Distributing tickets for the event
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There are dozens of shoe shiners in Chichicastenango. Starting as young as five years old, these youngsters prowl the streets looking for leather shoes to turn into shiny proof of their work.

“Shoe shine?” they ask  in earnest. “Son muy sucio.”  (They are very dirty.)

These poorly dressed youngsters can be seen carrying their little wooden shoe shine boxes in their blackened hands in search of one more customer. For three quetzales (about 40 cents U.S.) they will wax your shoes and buff them to a brilliant sheen. Really. Many of these boys do a fine job. If you don’t let them shine your shoes, they may follow you for a block asking for money for a tamale, some toy in a nearby store, or simply for a quetzal to help increase their take by the end of the day.

In February 2012, a Christian group from Saginaw, Michigan visited Chichicastenango to help with several projects at ASELSI. One of the projects was an outreach for the shoeshine boys.

ASELSI rented out the local municipal theater and the team gave the kids an afternoon of fun and games. This was an opportunity these boys do not often have — a chance to be children. After winning prizes of shoe wax, toys, toothbrushes, and more during games of hot potato. The boys enjoyed coloring, crafts, and dodgeball. After the games, the boys listened to a lively presentation of the Gospel and all 25 of them responded to accept Christ!

This is a great step for these boys to start a relationship with Christ, but now a followup and discipleship program needs to be developed! Please pray for an ongoing opportunity for these young boys to grow in their relationship with Christ.

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Chichi Feeding Program

January 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Praying with shoeshine boys

Praying with shoeshine boys
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In Chichi boys as young as 5 years old prowl the streets carrying what look like little black toolboxes. Their hands are filthy and most of their ragged clothes are a close match. These boys are the shoeshine boys looking for anyone with  leather shoes to shine for as low as two quetzales (about 26 U.S. cents) and as high as they can get foreigners to pay.

Another common site in Chichi are the carriers of heavy things. These men may be as old as well into their 80s, but they are men with strong backs and hard lives hired to carry heavy burdens for shop owners and individuals.

For these boys and men, ASELSI puts on a special feeding outreach in the local central park. Usually this involves sending out a small team to pass out tickets and then returning to the town park with 30 to 60 hamburgers, chips, a drink and some cookies.

Before the sack lunches are passed out, we have some fun songs and then someone shares a testimony of how God changed their life. After a brief presentation of the Gospel we’ll pray for anyone who wants to accept Christ or just needs prayer.

Then it’s lunch time and all the individuals with tickets line up and receive their lunches. The most exciting part of these outreaches is seeing the guys respond to Christ. The hardest part is having to tell those without tickets that we don’t have any more meals to give away.

 

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Hope and a Heartrending Home Visit

January 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Carrying the food tub.

Carrying the food tub.
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While hosting the first ASELSI team of 2012, we left the main road and went out to visit a family with a large tub filled with food for them. As we wound down hairpin curves, our little white Toyota van bumped over hardened ruts and finally descended to the smooth sand beside the Motagua River near the family home in the area of Xepocol.

After picking our way along the rocky bank, we walked by a ruined bridge that had been destroyed in the 2010 flood that ripped through this valley as a result of tropical storm Agatha. We stepped on rounded stones and crossed  a makeshift log bridge over the gently flowing water, it was hard to imagine the torrent that must have been this river just two years ago.

The house We followed the river up stream until we saw a small group of children high on a bluff above us looking down and jabbering excitedly as we worked our way up a ravine to the top of the bluff. These kids were some of the eight children we had come to visit. [Read more...]

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A Mayan witch accepts Jesus

August 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A mayan priest accepts Christ!

In a recent update from one of our fellow ASELSI missionaries, an amazing example of God working in Guatemala was described…
Emily Romero described what she saw while translating for a medical team in the village of Xalbaquiej:

She said that an older man sat down for a medical checkup. He had three strange large silver rings with skulls on them. Through the K’iche’ translator they discovered that he was a Mayan witch and wore the rings because, “They protect me at night when I go to bed and everywhere I travel. You see, I am a Mayan witch.”

Many Guatemalans still participate in the Mayan religious traditions and those who do are often antagonistic towards evangelical Christians.

After prescribing the man his medicine, the team sent him over to the local evangelism team. With many people covering this meeting with prayer, one of ASELSI’s team leaders told the witch doctor about the promises of eternal life found in the Bible. The team was so excited to hear how the Mayan witch doctor responded to the Gospel..He said, “You know, I have religious books in my house from many religions…from the Catholics, the Mayans, and the evangelicals…but none of them make more sense than the ones that were written by Christians. I do want to accept Christ into my life today.”

Romero described the scene as full of excitement as they rejoiced over the change in this man’s life as he stepped from death into life as he accepted Christ’s gift.

Praise the Lord for this new brother and pray that this now former witch doctor will grow strong in the Word of God and have even greater influence as a follower of Christ than he did as a Mayan priest.

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Miguel’s Story: Physical need leads to spiritual hope

November 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Miguel was two when his mother first brought him to the clinic.

Miguel in about 2005

His severely clubbed foot and eye problems made life very difficult for this growing boy, but that first visit in 2002 began a life changing relationship for both Miguel and his family.

Over a matter of four years, Miguel underwent care for his eye condition and his deformed foot was replaced with a prosthetic. With special care and therapy he literally stepped up to his dream of being able to kick a soccer ball like the other kids. The medical team cried the day he kicked a ball for the first time.

Miguel and his mom at the Father's Heart Clinic in 2005

Despite hearing the Gospel in her own language during many clinic visits, Miguel’s mother, Maria, consistently declined accepting Jesus Christ. However, when a short-term mission team visited them in 2008, a team member asked her if she had ever accepted Jesus into her life. Maria said, “No.”But when they asked her if she would like to she said, “Yes.”. That was just the start. That day Miguel’s two sisters, grandmother, and Miguel himself also accepted the Lord! It took four years of caring, but the love of Christ brought new light and life into this family.
In 2010 we saw Miguel, now about 10 years old, standing on his own among other children as they played in the clinic yard. He is doing well.

Here's Miguel with some of his art work in 2010

Pray that more families will accept the healing power of God in their bodies and their hearts.

This is just one example of how ASELI’s Father’s Heart Clinic is making a difference both physically and spiritually in the lives of the Mayan people of Guatemala.

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Guatemalan Mission Outreach Team

August 31, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Eight days after a volcano erupted and a storm released mud slides and flooding in Guatemala, a team of 15 people from Resurrection Life Church was on the ground and ready to help. [Read the account from Mission Network News.]

The team worked along-side the residents of homes that had been swamped with mud. Shoveling and scraping, they cleared mud from three homes, a school and from around a church. They also shared the Gospel and distributed tracts and food for the people.

“The people paid attention to our message not just because we had some gifts for them, but because we spent time working right along side them to help them get their village back from the mud and to show that God loves them,” team leader Michael Shead said. “While many seeds were planted in the village, we saw children respond to Jesus at a school outreach and even had one man on the street accept Christ after just a short conversation.”

This team mixed manual labor with medical assistance, ministry outings to a school, home visits, and a prayer visit with patients at a public hospital.

“Seeing the team serve so well together was a reminder of how we can work together for the Lord wherever we are,” Shead said. ” I want to do this more!”

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