Soccer stalled, Church engaging

Two items to cover in today’s post. I’ll answer for you on whether or not you want the bad news or the good news first. 

1. Pastor Jorge from the Teguc Church stopped by on Wednesday to chat about a few things. Unfortunately the closing of the soccer field was the downer of those topics. While renting out the field brought in some funds, it also brought in some rather colorful elements of the surrounding communities, especially at night. I have some questions personally on how this was all handled/administered, but the long and the short of it is that people were getting robbed...not just those coming to Church but in the neighborhood right next to the Church, fights were breaking out, drugs were being used, vandalism has been a big problem on the Church’s property (remember one of the reasons we needed to fence off the clinic property?) which is not just from those guys, but they were doing their part for sure.  

Not having their fence/wall done has not helped matters. We had been working with them to finish it, but they lost interest and changed focus, so we stopped taking groups to help (as was our agreement...when they work on it, we will help work on it.)

Saturday they tacked up a temporary wall to just try to keep the drug users and other recreational vandals and site visitors out, and removed all the bleacher seating and roofing, as well as placed the rocks in the pitch to keep it from being useful even if they break the chain link fence to gain access. I told Jorge that when they are ready to get back at it, we would be there to help...but he was not sure when that might be, especially as that is not a decision he gets to make by himself.

Field being closed...avoids most of the problems that up until this point they have not found ways to avoid (some solutions potentially could have been...finishing the fence, having a guard/supervisor making sure everything is on the level, banning offenders, etc.) So, the pitch will be closed at least until next year. You might have figured out this means the Church itself can not use the field either...a big sacrifice as Jorge pointed out. The wood and roofing for the bleachers are stored for the time being, hopefully they will come up with a solution that will suit them, as well as the greater community sooner rather than later.

I post this because there were quite a few people involved helping us help the youth get that soccer field established a few years ago, and then the soccer ministry, and I know they plus others will want to know of this, prayerfully, temporarily discouraging news. Pray the Church can find a way out of this mess and into being able to use this great tool at least for the Church itself, and potentially again as an outreach to the greater community.

2. Anniversary service at Cantaranas yesterday.

The Church still just has a lean-to next to the house Jonathan rents (for their housing/clothing store) so somehow they were able to borrow the mayor’s office first floor to use for this service, which included guests and well wishers from all the Churches His Eyes supports (Talanga brought a big contingent in Celeo’s packed pick-up, Sampedrana brought the very full Land Cruiser, and nearby San Juancito) plus the band from the Tegucigalpa Church came, plus a full bus of 45 people, the Churches planted in Danli and El Bosque via the His Eyes Talanga Church were there, and even others I did not get to meet.   (You will notice in the picture everyone moving their chairs wherever they had to in order to get out of the very hot afternoon sun.) 

Three years having the Church there...wow. Seeing them dig the footers for their building on the property we bought, and starting to make their own block to start building next year, is encouraging.

(Here is a shot of people gathering around to see the Church with help from San Juancito put on a drama about Christ entering the life of a murderer who was in jail.) 

Seeing us have an anniversary service where we did an eye brigade almost 11 years ago, in a place at that time that was so remote we had to stay over night (the currently paved road was a cratered mess...took many hours to get to Teguc) and had no clue a Church would eventually be planted...was eerily cool. Yeah...God is like that.

Here is a picture of the building when we did the brigade so long ago...quite interestingly, in the middle of the picture is our Honduran friend Patti, who was helping on her break that day, and just happened to be back from Spain on vacation (she works there and has for several years...easier to get there without problems than the USA) to go with us last night to the anniversary service.