This winter Baylor Missions sent a Sports Ministry team to Guatemala to partner with FCA Guatemala! Katherine Johnson, Sports Chaplain, led the team and answers a few questions about what the trip was like!
Briefly describe what the trip looked like.
We took 10 female athletes and 3 staff to Anigua Guatemala for 6 days to partner with FCA Guatemala. We served the community of Chimaltenango for three mornings by doing sports camps with their kids. The fourth day we were able to go back to their community and personally deliver several water filters to their homes that we had put together. In the afternoons each day we went to a very rural, remote community called Parramos and partnered with another ministry besides FCA to do sports camps for their kids. I would say that our girls learned the true joy of serving and loving on God’s people even if they were unknown to us at the beginning. They learned the value of handwork where you just completely exhausted yourself the whole day for the Lord. The girls were also amazed at how much the people gave in return to us.
Tell us about an impactful moment from the trip.
Friday night of our trip we had a spontaneous change in plans and ended up at the Chimaltenango community Christmas celebration. We really had no idea about this until Friday morning as at the crew was setting up for it on our sports fields as were doing camps. Several of the kids invited us back but we weren’t sure we were going to be able to make it. Well 6pm came around and we were back at the fields for the celebration. I had never been to anything like it before. Booths set up for girls to get hair and make up done, photo booths with santa, booth for kids to play bingo games, booth for free clothes for families and a Christian band set up on stage playing. Once we got there were started mingling and were happy to be put to work. Little did we know we were going to be serving dinner to these wonderful families, in the dark, about 1500 strong. I initially thought there is no way we will get all these people served before sunrise. ha! Amazing how God just multiplied our measly efforts of walking back and forth to serve these families a wonderful tamale meal. What a privilege it was do bring them food as they all say so patiently. On the ride back to our hotel my thoughts were simply, ‘Thank you Lord for allowing this unexpected night to take place where we could do the simple task of serving these amazing families their Christmas dinner.”
We are thankful for this team and the work they did in Guatemala! If you’re interested in serving with Baylor Missions this summer, there are still a few options to do that. Reach out and find out what trips are still accepting applications!
Kathleen Post is the Ministry Associate for Global Missions and a student at Truett Seminary.