Maribel Rice with team members in Costa Rica

It was with lots of fears and nervousness that I left my country this time, since it was my first time flying alone. When I arrived in Costa Rica, I didn’t know how blessed I would be for two weeks. During the first week God showed me that sometimes you only have to be quiet and HE will do the rest. I spent the first fives days with a missionary family and I enjoyed the time that we shared together. I also worked with a group that had arrived at the Bible seminary where they live and serve. I enjoyed working in construction with the group so much that I was tempted to work with them instead of the medical team because I am not a doctor or a translator.

When the medical group arrived, I already knew about half of them even though I hadn’t spent much time with them before. The other half of the group were complete strangers, but in a short time I saw that they were wonderful people. In the beginning I doubted that I was where God wanted me, but that’s when I realized that sometimes, we ourselves may feel out of place and in reality we are exactly where God wants us. We worked in many different places with lots of different people that are really not much different from us. They were people that not only needed medicine, they needed to be loved and not just any love; it’s only the never changing love of God that softens the hardest of hearts! So my first mission trip outside of Guatemala, has filled my life with blessings because I was able to serve and God allowed me to get to know many awesome people!

Five16 Magazine Issue No. 7

God is still opening doors in unique ways for our ministry. One of the most recent has been having a magazine article written and featured in the current issue of Five16 Magazine. Our good friend Paul Burgett was the author of the article and contacted the magazine about the possibility of having it published by them. Five16 Magazine is an online extreme sports magazine that offers a Christian perspective on the extreme sports scene and music culture, but is still able to captivate the interest of non-believers as well. I totally recommend this magazine and you can sign up for a 100% free subscription at the Fize16 Magazine Link. The actual magazine’s pages are setup on a Flash viewer, so your internet connection needs to be of a decent speed. Our article is titled, “To Fall Like a Cat and can be found on pages 34-41, of the current issue. We hope you get a chance to check it out and please give us your feedback about it. We want to say a special word of thanks to Paul Burgett for writing it and to magazine editor Chad Armel for including it in this month’s issue; God bless you guys.

Habacuc & Dave were my roommates at the 09 Christian Skate ministry Conference.

Our ministry will be collecting financial contributions to help with disaster aid relief in Chile from this morning’s huge earthquake. Our good friend Habacuc Diaz Ramos is a missionary in Santiago Chile, just 200 miles northeast of the epicenter from the jolt that registered 8.8 on the richter scale. All donations received for this humanitarian aid effort will be forwarded to Habacuc for dispersal in hart hit areas. As always your gifts are tax-deductible, and remember it’s times like these when we all need to join together to show the love of Christ to those who desperately need it. Contact Us, for more info.

This is just some video footage of some of our regular skaters at our February 23rd skate session  in Coban, Guatemala. We only used three ramps in this outreach because it was during the week with about twenty skaters in all. The types of ramps that you will see here are a quarter pipe,  a kicker and a fun box. Let us know what you think!

Catherine-singing in the rain 01/31/2010

I just want to take a few minutes and give God the praise that HE deserves for something that, even the non-believers are talking about at our skate outreach in Coban, Guatemala. I want to start out by saying that I have lived and served as a full-time missionary in Guatemala since November of 2001, and have seen God completely take over and intervene in many different situations. Occasionally HE has pushed a rain cloud away, until we finish an outdoor event but nothing equals how HE has orchestrated this year’s rainy season; in terms of our outdoor activities with the local skaters. Coban is located in the edge of a tropical rainforest, so light drizzle with high humidity and early morning fog is a given here. However, there is also a very evident rainy season here between the months of November to February where heavy, all-day rains are expected a couple times a week.

I returned from last year’s Christian skate ministry conference on November the third, all fired up and refocused to continue leading these local, at-risk kids in a lifestyle of following Jesus on a daily basis. We held an average of three weekly, outdoor skate activities for the months of November and December of 2009. We are now in February of 2010 people, and we have yet to have our Masonite covered skateboarding ramps even drizzled on! I am not saying that it hasn’t rained. On days in between the skate activities, it has rained for hours and we have even had several steady two to three day torrential rains. We have held approximately thirty outdoor activities in the last four months including skate sessions, Bible studies and Sunday afternoon events that are four hours long. Even yesterday as I was driving to the school for our 3:00PM Skater Bible Study, I started shaking my head as I hit a patch of light rain. I was noticing the the thickness of the dark clouds covering Coban like a blanket. I wasn’t shaking me head out of doubt; it was because I already knew that God was going to do it, once again! Jose, a regular skater that comes from Santa Cruz about fifteen minutes away, almost got off the bus because it was raining so hard. It rained at my house and reportedly all around the city of Coban. At the school where we were pouring our hearts out to rejected kids, it never rained a drop! As I was finishing up teaching the Bible study, I told them that it doesn’t matter who has turned their backs towards them and rejected them because God loves every one of them so much and you want to know how I know that? I asked them to think about how many times we have held outdoor activities since the beginning of November and not once have we been rained on. Ivan, a hardcore Emo kid in his twenties said, “hey, you know that’s right; we live in Coban; can you believe that?” YES I CAN, PRAISE THE LORD!

Metal Trusses are in place

As you can see from the adjoining picture, the metal structure for the roof has now been fabricated and welded into place. The roof support is made out of metal trusses and will be covered by long sheets of tin roofing material. Both of which are very typical styles for most construction in this area. The roofing tin should be installed soon and then the floor would be poured next week. The cement floor will need to dry and start to cure before we will be able to hold skate sessions there. So we are probably looking at a few more weeks of dodging raindrops and lifting 350 lb. ramps, before we inaugurate the new facility. Currently, we are holding outdoor skate sessions on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with the Skater Bible Study being held at the beginning of the outreach activity each Thursday. Please continue to keep our Extreme Sports Ministry in your prayers!

Maribel Rice

Maribel left for San Jose Costa Rica on Saturday February 13th and is staying with our friends there until the medical mission team arrives this Saturday, the 20th. Then, she will be joining with the medical mission team from Life Covenant Church to serve with them for four straight days of medical day clinics. She will be returning to Guatemala on Saturday February 27th. This is the same church that brought a medical mission team to Coban last February. Please pray for God to use this team mightily for HIS glory and that they would make an eternal difference in the lives of others!

Ray Wolfe

We wanted to give you a quick update about our friend Ray Wolfe’s participation in medical relief flights to Haiti last week. Ray was one of a five man flight team that made multiple trips between Florida and Les Cayes to carry a medical team and much needed supplies to the island so heavily damaged by the January 12th earthquake. Ray is a Captain with Southwest Airlines and volunteers for our ministry in the area of Web Development. The unique part of their relief trips was the ability of the Albatross seaplane they were flying to land in the water as opposed to the overrun airport. There is much more info available, including pictures and stories on the Albatross Haiti Relief Mission’s page on Facebook.

I just wanted to give you all a quick status update about the construction of the building that we will be using for the Extreme Sports Ministry. We have spent the last week getting the ground smoothed out and ready for pouring the floor, including the removal of excess dirt, rocks, roots etc. One of the local skaters helped me shovel dirt and God allowed me the opportunity to mentor him about his current circumstances. He’s really searching and I know its only a matter of time before he realizes that the Lord is capable of fixing his messed up life, just exactly like he did for me in years past.

The actual floor pouring will be done after the metal roofing is in place. Currently, the huge, metal support structures are being fabricated offsite and will hopefully be ready to install sometime next week. Until then, we’re just waiting; which is the toughest part for me. I am definitely ready to get back to the busy routine of holding regular skates sessions and our weekly Bible study for Skaters. We are also hoping to use the building as a youth center where the locals can come hangout, play games or shoot pool, and learn more about God. We don’t have a pool table or video games yet, but we believe that God will open those doors when the timing is right.

Thanks so much for those of you who are keeping this project lifted up in prayer!

Catherine with Hector & Carmen

We have been blessed to have a strong friendship with Hector and Carmen Coc for many years. We first met them at a patient screening for children with physical impairments in March of 2007. Their daughter Evelin Suleymi was a special needs child who was born with Spinal Bifida and Hydrocephalus. Our ministry helped her receive needed surgeries and a custom wheelchair before she went home to be with Jesus on January 8, 2008. Our involvement with them during a tough time in their lives built a strong bond between our families. When they returned Evelin’s wheelchair to us, Maribel told Carmen about the necessity for a woman to take folic acid several months prior to becoming pregnant to improve the chances of the fetus forming correctly.  Before they left, Maribel gave Carmen a huge bottle of folic acid with about a year’s supply. We visited their home with a mission team last August to share a meal with them. At that time, I happened to notice that Carmen had put on some weight and I asked Maribel if she thought that she could be pregnant. Maribel didn’t think so and I didn’t have the nerve to ask. This morning I received a phone call from Hector saying that Carmen gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby girl last night. Praise the Lord for His faithfulness with this family! We are so happy for them and are anxious to see her. Click here to view Evelin Suleymi’s story.