Arrival and First Night

Hola,

We arrived safely in Guatemala City yesterday afternoon around 3:00pm and began our adventures. Jaime, Coach Horner, and Co. arrived at the airport to greet us and pick us up in two large travel vans. We came straight to the Mennonite Mission, where we are staying, and unpacked our belongings and had a moment to catch our breath. Coach Horner arranged for pizza to be delivered soon after we arrived so everyone was quickly able to unpack and chow down on some pizza. Step 1 in acclimating to the new country was a success!

We were scheduled to play a game at a public court against a youth team from a local church/community but the rainy season had its own plans and our game was rained out. As is custom in Latin American culture, we adjusted and the evening went incredibly well. The church members still wanted to have us over for dinner and fellowship so we loaded up and traveled to their church to sing songs, eat dinner and visit with the people.

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The youth group has a praise band that is very good and we were able to play games and sing songs with them for about an hour before our guys took the stage. (Yes you read that right...our team took the stage to play and sing praise songs) The team did a great job as Ryan led on his guitar and the church members seemed very appreciative of the effort our guys made to lead them in worship.

After all of the singing had ended, Gage stood up and shared a brief testimony of how the Lord has shown him that He desires a relationship with you and not just that you do the right things and stay out of trouble. Tim followed up with a message from Ephesians 4 about the unity of the body of Christ and how God has created his Church to be diverse but unified in purpose.

The evening ended with a fantastic home cooked meal from the kitchen of the church. Baked Chicken, rice, beans and several desserts were prepared for us and served to us and we sat and fellowshipped with each other and the youth group.

Even though we didn't get to play any basketball today, it was a great way to start the trip by getting acclimated socially with the locals and hear others share about how a relationship with Christ has changed their life. Today, we are playing at 2 different schools this morning and later tonight we will play a semi-pro team. (We are making up for missed basketball from yesterday!)

Continue to pray that our team will be challenged to share and be bold in their faith and that the rain will hold off long enough for us to play during the day at the schools we visit.

Adios