De La Comunidad Chruch Plant

On January 16, 2011 The first meeting was held of a new church plant in our skate warehouse with some familiar faces. Willie Girón who was the pastor of the Central Nazarene Church in Coban, is the pastor. In December of 2010, he and his family returned from serving as missionaries for two years in San Jose, Costa Rica and he and began visiting lots of people who were calling to see him. The name of this new church is De La Comunidad in Spanish which means Of The Community and its mission is to serve the needs of the people. Please keep this growing church plant in your prayers for God’s guidance and direction.

Your Prayers Are Needed..
God opened the doors last week for us to kick off the new year with visits to two homes of special needs children in Coban, Guatemala. The purpose of our Humanitarian Outreach is to help under privileged Guatemalans build relationships with local Christians to give them a support net. This shows them the true love of Christ; it’s a great privilege to serve them!

Dora To Have Neurological Exam..
Dora has a mild grade of Spina Bifida & she was born with her left shoulder detached from her collarbone. She really seems to have full range of motion, but complains a lot about bone pain. She is only four years old and my main concern is that as her bones and muscles grow that her detached shoulder blade may grow to the point that it effects her spine  or other parts of her body. A missionary friend of mine in Guatemala City is setting up an appointment with a respected neurologist soon, so that he can advise us of possible treatments or surgery.

Luisa Marisol Needs a Custom Wheelchair..
Luisa Marisol is 12 yrs. old & her condition is due to a high fever she had with meningitis as a baby. She needs a wheelchair that tilts back to allow the muscles in her body to relax! We will soon begin the process of trying to get her fitted for a wheelchair which would truly be a huge blessing to her and her family! We would appreciate your prayers for both of these precious little girls as we try to serve them and connect them with local Christians who will be an example of God’s love to both families.

Rice Family Guatemala

I have so much to share that I don’t know where to start. I’ll just start by giving God the praise because HE is on the move in lives all over the world! HE is also on the move in you, me and all HE wants is for us to follow HIM. More specifically in our family and ministry, the Lord is on the move and that is why I am so excited to publicly announce what some of you already know privately. Our family will be moving back to my wife Maribel’s home town of Zacapa, Guatemala. Zacapa is where I first served as a missionary before moving to Coban six years ago. So to some this move may look like a step backward, but it’s actually a gigantic step forward for both our family and ministry.

For our family, it will allow us to live closer to family and have more of a support structure for the future. We will be temporarily living with family, while we start to build our first house on our lot in Zacapa that was finally paid off last spring. This will allow us to economize and use the money we have been spending monthly for rent to help us start purchasing building materials. Most importantly, it will allow Maribel and me more quality, alone time because her sisters are the only people that we leave our daughter with to even go out on a date night.

The ministry is growing in so many ways and God is leading our steps so that the work that we started in Coban will continue. Our cell group leaders are now ready to take the next step to encompass the responsibilities instead of just being led. I will still be helping out on a regular basis but they will be the ones actually running the skate outreach locally in Coban. Our great friend, Pastor Willie, has returned from two years of ministering in Costa Rica and has agreed to help mentor the leaders and take the discipleship of the skaters to the next level. This will free me up to use our mobile skate ministry to plant new cell groups in other regions of the country which was the original vision HE gave me when we started using extreme sports as a platform to preach the Gospel. In addition, I will be helping serve other skate ministries as God leads. God is opening doors for us to hold more humanitarian style outreaches through medical missions and joining with other organizations to help serve their needs as well.

So as you see, we are involved in a lot of ministry outside of Coban so that’s why it’s so important to live closer to our family in Zacapa. Please continue to keep us in prayer during this transition period because there will be a lot of traveling involved; we only have until the end of January to move our belongings to a town three hours away. We are so thankful for all your love, prayers and support. I know I say this a lot, but we truly are your hands and feet and it’s an honor to be able to spread the love of Jesus to people that so desperately need HIM! Have a super-blessed beginning to 2011!