Rice Family

Following after the footsteps of Jesus, is a never ending adventure with lots of twists and turns in the road. After living with family in Zacapa in 2011, God is supernaturally opening some doors that I never dreamed possible. We are in the process of moving yet again and this time we are headed to Guatemala City! We will still continue to build relationships and hold outreaches in Coban and other cities as God leads, but our home and ministry hub will be in Guatemala City.

We have been concerned for a long time about finding the best answer for our daughter’s bilingual education. When we lived in Coban, she went to a bilingual school and both languages were starting to flourish. Last year she studied at a Spanish speaking school in Zacapa and I noticed that she was losing some of her English abilities. So one day after school ended for the year, she and I flew to Virginia and the following Monday she was enrolled as an exchange student at the ABC preschool in Amelia, Virginia. She is now dominating English and also very inquisitive, as most five year olds are. In Guatemala City, she will now be able to attend a US accredited, English speaking, Christian school for missionary kids. We are so thankful to our friends who are helping to make this possible by paying the rent for a house that is just minutes away from the school.

This move will also be beneficial for our ministry. I can’t even imagine what it will feel like to pick up mission teams and interns at the airport without making a long trip! Our focus will still be on the cities in the interior of the country, but living in Guatemala City will allow us to reach out to many more cities in a circumference of Guatemala City instead of mainly focusing on the Northeast region of the country. Please continue to keep our family and ministry in your prayers for all the remaining minor details to be taken care of in a timely fashion.

One hundred miles north of Los Angeles lays the city of Santa Barbara, California. For now– I call this place home, however; if God wills it I will transcend the California coast life and call Guatemala a temporary home. My name is Jonathan Flores and I just graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  One of the biggest things I left college with, besides a broad education, is a stronger Christian faith. In a college that is notoriously known for it’s heavy partying, I found myself asking the question a lot of 18 year olds ask themselves: Where do I fit in? Some choose sports, fraternities, or clubs that they avidly attend. While those activities are not in any way all bad, I found myself asking the same question, “where DO I fit in?”  I was blessed to have a group of friendly guys invite me to a residence hall bible study and they didn’t just want numbers for attendance, they wanted to invite me to be part of what they were doing. In short, they were part of a Christian organization on campus that desired to give every student the opportunity to know Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t much later that I got involved with this community of faithful college students who desired to be “missional”.  Knowing God personally through His word really helped me understand what it meant to be on mission for Him. The bible opens up with a union (Adam and Eve) and ends in a union (Jesus and his followers, the “bride”), and God since eternity has always been God the Father. He is Father to many sons and daughters and this is seen through the covenant that God has made through the death of Jesus Christ. The cross not only forgives us from sin, but it also restores us to have a relational life with God. By the grace of God we can live by this beautiful truth, but in no way are we to stay idle. God has a mission for all his followers, and that is that we share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone.

This idea of being missional on campus and in my surrounding community became very important to me, not only because I wanted everyone to know the love and freedom that is found through Christ Jesus (John 6:27), but also because I wanted to share my life as a testimony of the powerful work that God does through his sons and daughters and how He yearns this for every living person. While praying about possible post-college jobs, I prayed about being on mission for God. I went to an event at a local church and saw pictures of a group who had gone to Guatemala. I saw pictures of homes being built and the poor being loved on. My heart sank and that night I prayed for the people of Guatemala.  I am a first generation American of Guatemalan parents, however, I am not familiar with the country or its needs. I understood how I can serve in Guatemala and knew I had to pray about going on missions there. Matthew 25:40 says, “The King will reply, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine you did for me.” God loves his children despite their backgrounds and this verse helped me see how I can be used by God to serve the people of Guatemala.

If you ask me today, where I fit in, I will firmly tell you that my identity is found in Jesus Christ and I am praying about bringing the gospel and love of Jesus Christ to Guatemalans.

The new Luisa Marisol

Back in January, when we met her for the very first time, Luisa Marisol needed a custom wheelchair due to her condition after having meningitis at the age of one; or so we thought. We started looking for options to see how we could help her and her family. We got word that there was a wheelchair team that was coming to give wheelchairs to children in Antigua in February.  So a team from a local church plant and me set off on an early morning journey to Antigua.  When it was her turn, the occupational therapist removed her bulky clothing to fit her for the chair and all of our jaws dropped because she was literally just skin and bones, weighing just seventeen pounds at twelve years of age. Her condition was so severe, that the therapist stopped what she was doing to take us to a nearby hospital that has a program for malnourished children. The hospital is called Hermano Pedro and has a program to help low income families receive high quality care for their children. The doctor told us that her only chance for survival and full recuperation was if she were to be admitted into the nourishment program for several months. This was a difficult decision for her parents to make because they thought that they were just going to Antigua to get her a wheelchair.  So, we left her there in February and we prayed, putting her in God’s hands.

Luisa Marisol January 2011

As the time passed, the local pastor and I would go and visit with the family to check on her status but they really couldn’t tell us much. They were calling the hospital regularly, but were unable to go visit her because of the expense of the long trip to Antigua. On Friday July 8th, we went back for a visit and to our great surprise, Luisa Marisol was there and looking like a completely different person. She now weighs 28 lbs and her arms and legs have filled out nicely. The change is so drastic that her mother didn’t even recognize her when she went to pick her up and had to ask a nurse to show her which child was hers! The mother told us that she went back to the place where the wheelchair distribution was and that she is scheduled to get a wheelchair in August.

Luisa Marisol with the occupational therapist

The best part of this process is that the parents are getting an education about the proper way to prepare food for her and now she is on different medications. The father was in tears as he told us about the lessons that God has taught them through all of this. We are so thankful to God for giving us the opportunity to meet her and for the miracle that HE has done in this family. They will be presenting her in the Coban church plant, De La Comunidad, after they get her wheelchair and now know that there is a group of local Christians that care about them.

Joe Denton & Steven Rice in front of a lake in Honduras

The following was written by Joe Denton describing the trip:

Faith Drop teaches simple faith in Christ!

For those of you that have been following our blog, you know that we have helped organize extreme sports cell groups in Guatemala. The way that we design the cell groups is so that leaders get raised up and then sent out to start others. The new extreme sports cell group in Gustatoya, El Progreso is just that; a cell group being started by leaders of cell groups in Coban & Guatemala City. We hang out with the kids and give them a safe place to practice sports that are widely rejected in Central America. We give testimonies, share a short message & use physical illustrations such as the Faith Drop to help get them involved. The Faith Drop is where a blindfolded person falls backward and they have to trust that they will be safe and not get hurt. This teaches them that they can trust in Jesus in the same way! I walked around and talked to everyone throughout the Sunday afternoon session on May 8, 2011. There were kids there from several different cities and what they shared was all too familiar to my ears. They say that they are targets for prejudice and get insulted all the time, even threatened by some. They say that there are some BMX riders and skaters that do drugs or participate in gang activities so it makes all of them appear that way. We mentor them and give them ideas on how to combat prejudice; it starts with following Jesus daily and portraying a positive clean image to others while practicing extreme sports! Please pray for this new cell group as God begins to form leaders, that they be hand picked by HIM and not by man!

Medical Consult Station

As we are finishing up our trip to El Salvador, I wanted to give a quick update to let you know about some exciting things that have taken place here in San Miguel. First of all, I must say that parts of this trip have been very frustrating and in other ways it has been awesome. We are here because we were invited to be a part of a medical missions team by our good friends at Covenant Life Church in Jeffersonville, Indiana. When the team arrived in the airport last Saturday, all the plastic tubs of medicine that they brought to hold the medical outreaches were detained in the airport. There is an extensive procedure involved whenever large quantities of medicine are entered into any Central American country and the locals that were in charge of logistics were unaware. Therefore, we held four straight days of medical clinics based on a promise that the medicine would be released on Thursday. Yesterday, permission was not granted to release the medicine from customs due to one last letter that was missing and this morning at 10:00A EDT the medicine is scheduled to be released. In spite of the difficulties, the team has kept focused on being a blessing to the local Salvadorian people!

Evangelism Station

As a part of each day’s medical consultations, the people pass through several stations including evangelism, blood pressure and pharmacy. The whole week, our missionary Maribel Rice has been serving alongside Pastor Angel Bermeo who is a friend of ours from Costa Rica. They have been using an evangelistic cube that has pictures on it and helps the gospel message to be explained in a very simple way. They were able to lead fifty people in making decisions for Christ in the evangelism station, praise the Lord!! I think this has taught the whole team a very important lesson and one that I know I’ll never forget and that is to keep pressing on when God has called you to a specific task, no matter what the circumstances look like. HE will always find a way to turn a negative situation around so that HIS Word can be spread to non believers. Please pray this morning so that these medicines can be released and the promises that we made to people all week can be fulfilled!

Feeding the Homeless

The De La Comunidad church plant in Coban has been meeting for two months, but it’s already making a difference in the community. The focus is to meet the needs of hurting people in the community and to serve people. Project LASARO is an outreach to Coban’s indigent community. The majority of the homeless here are elderly people who walk around town begging for money and food. Every day, leaders and members of the church serve food to those who so desperately need it. The vision is to organize a building where they can be fed, bathed and cared for. There are also other projects in the works to reach out to children who have a specific need. Lots of people in Coban are excited about these projects that are blessing the underprivileged and the church is growing as a result.

Miguel

On my recent visit to Coban, I joined the team and fed the homeless. We drove around town for an hour and a half with a pitcher of drink and fresh bread. Some of them are sitting on the same street corner every day, but others are harder to find as they wander all around town. Whenever we find them, we park the car, serve the drink in a disposable cup and we love on them. On one of those trips, a disabled man in a wheelchair named Miguel said, “I want to go to your church, you all are close to God because you serve people.” The funny thing is that noone had ever mentioned that we are from a church, he just knew. Don’t you think that makes an interesting lesson? With all the complex strategies that are out there for church building, this church plant is growing rapidly because they are serving people! Please continue to keep this church plant in your prayers and you can visit the De La Comunidad Facebook page in Spanish.

Gustavo is the leader of new extreme sports cell group in Guastatoya, El Progreso.

In the first few months of 2011, our extreme sports cell group in Coban has exploded. The leaders have really stepped up to the plate, while I continue to encourage them by phone, Internet and visits. The Friday night cell group meeting has grown to an average of approximately twenty people each week. In addition, five more sessions have been added to the weekly schedule including two skate sessions, three BMX bike sessions and an all girl skate session every Saturday afternoon. Once a week, the leaders visit the home of someone who has visited the warehouse recently. These visits have already produced results and two skaters have recently joined the leadership team. Recently, a visiting freestyle BMX athlete named Gustavo Morales visited the Friday night meeting and was so impressed that he asked us to help him organize an extreme sports cell group in his city called Guastatoya, El Progreso. Last week, three of us went to visit him and a decision was made to hold a monthly event there. The NorGuat cell group will travel from Coban and I will travel from Zacapa with our mobile ramps and grind boxes to hold the events. There will be testimonies, a Biblical message and lots of extreme sports fun at every activity.

On March 18th, Maribel and I will be driving to El Salvador  to hook up with our friends from Covenant Life Church in Jeffersonville, IN. This is the same group that Maribel served with last year in San Jose, Costa Rica. We are so excited to accept an invitation to join this medical mission team that will be working in a town near the Honduran border called San Miguel. The trip is being hosted by an organization called Open Eyes Ministries and it will be awesome to work together with them for the glory of God.  Please pray for this medical mission and all the logistical issues that are involved so that the people of San Miguel will be blessed and have a chance to experience the love of Christ through this team!

Luisa Marisol being checked by an occupational therapist

As many of you know, we carried Luisa Marisol and her family from Coban to Antigua on Friday to get a new wheelchair. Little did we know, that she would end up being admitted in the hospital instead! I already knew she was malnourished from our visit in her home, when she was fully clothed. However, when the occupational therapist (OT)  examined her to prescribe the correct wheelchair and removed her shirt; I think we were all stunned! The OT is a missionary in the Antigua area and knew of a very successful malnutrition program at a local hospital. Luisa Marisol’s parents were very hesitant to leave her there because of the six hour distance, but they realized that it was the best thing for her well being. One huge advantage that they have is that the hospital is a “social work” style, hospital that allows poor families to pay only what they can afford for her treatment. The name of the hospital in Spanish is Obras Sociales del Hermano Pedro (in English, Brother Peter’s Social Work)  and it is located just a couple of blocks from Antigua’s central park. Please pray for Luisa Marisol’s parents, Sebatian and Luisa; that they will let her stay in the program as much time as needed for her to gain enough weight. It is very difficult for Q’eqchi’ people to trust in people at a hospital that are strangers to them! The family was promised that Luisa Marisol will get her wheelchair after she gains enough weight to be able to size it correctly.