Bethel’s Wom­en’s Soc­cer Serves in Guatemala

MISHAWAKA – Ten mem­bers of Bethel’s wom­en’s soc­cer team trav­eled with the coach­ing staff to Guatemala over spring break to work along­side En­gadi Min­istries. They worked in Zone 18 of Guatemala City, in the com­mu­nity of El Paraiso, a low-in­come area that has been a hotspot for gang ac­tiv­ity in the last 20 years.  

The team worked on a pub­lic school that is cur­rently un­der con­struc­tion, help­ing with con­struc­tion and paint­ing. They also were able to spend a day at GIF (God is First) Eng­lish Acad­emy help­ing stu­dents with pro­nun­ci­a­tion and con­ver­sa­tion.  

Stu­dents at GIF are learn­ing Eng­lish to cre­ate a bet­ter life for them­selves fi­nan­cially as Eng­lish gives them the op­por­tu­nity to work in the tourist and ser­vice in­dus­try or an in­ter­na­tional call cen­ter lo­cated in Guatemala. With Eng­lish skills, wages are sig­nif­i­cantly higher than they could earn oth­er­wise.  

Ad­di­tion­ally, the team spent four days at a Chris­t­ian school run­ning the phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pe­riod and ran a soc­cer camp for kids in the com­mu­nity. Each of these pe­ri­ods of­fered an op­por­tu­nity to be­gin by shar­ing a spir­i­tu­ally based and char­ac­ter-fo­cused talk, as well as a time to play 6vs6 soc­cer. The team used these op­por­tu­ni­ties to share the gospel and serve the lo­cal com­mu­nity.  

“This group of ten women that we got to spend this trip with are out­stand­ing peo­ple,” Head Coach Jamie Lind­vall said.  “Get­ting to ex­pose them to some­thing that is out­side of our norm and our com­fort zone and ul­ti­mately ex­pand all of our world view for the bet­ter is a pri­mary goal be­hind this trip... I’m proud of each of them and grate­ful to have been able to share this trip with them.”