Wednesday, August 24, 2011
We visited the Buena Vista Sports Academy for Boys this morning run by Brock Johnson and his family of deepStream. They have made great progress in only a year's time. The school opened in May and enrolled 30 kids after tryouts including 150 children. The sport, you ask? Futbol. All of the kids in Guatemala play soccer.
Brock and his wife, Kerrie, were both on site as well as Mynor Leiva, Brock's first Guatemalan contact when he first arrived to Guatemala and now they are good friends. We had an opportunity to meet the kids that were on site today. We overhear them learning and practicing English in the background as we are getting a tour of the facility. It was great to witness Brock, Kerrie, Mynor and Mark's interaction with the boys. They are regular figures here at the Academy and you can tell they have made a connection with these boys in only a short time. Brock speaks of noticing a great deal of changes in the boys so far. Behaviorally, they engage more with one another learning to be more of a team, together, and in trusting one another. This visit definitely resinated with members of the
Indy Metro group.
As we were preparing for our trip there was talk of visiting 'the woman who knitted hat's,' Roberta in Buena Vista. She is kind of a big deal. We visited her and her four children at their home. The entire family, incredibly hospitable.
After lunch we visited 6 of our 9 women's homes enrolled in the Baking School. Our fist visit was with Lydia, Antoinetta's sister. This is our first time meeting her as she recently had surgery. We used part of our money raised for the trip to deliver her groceries to help out a bit. We visit Ana and her 4 children at her home. All of these women are incredibly hospitable. Ana in particular had prepared us a delicious banana bread with raisins and bananas on top. Incredible. The money she spent to prepare this for us would go so far in supporting her family. We heard her testimony and then she asked us to pray for her husband. To give him the strength to get through a difficult habit. All of the women we visited were so honest and open. The youngest student enrolled in the baking school, Karen, hosted us. Karen
has one child with her husband and they live with her father and step-mother. Her step-mother travels to Guatemala City seven days a week to sell flowers. It's about an hour and a half drive back and forth. We then visited Wilma. We were more than well fed at this point, in addition to the other treats, Wilma had prepared a homemade applesauce which was delicious! Her family struggles with the kids growing up while their home is getting smaller and smaller. What could have been the oldest lady in the Baking School hosted us with her entire family, husband, two sons in La Esquela de Arte. She has six children in total. She was, very obviously, a loving and generous woman. Strong individually and kept a strong rooted familia.
After dinner we visited with all of the women at the Baking School one final time. Time shared with them was so genuine. I am compelled to return.
