Who knew I was going to meet success today? Oh it was nothing I did… I met my first ZOE Group today and their team name was “Team Success” and successful they were!
Short version of the back story… ZOE is a faith-based orphan training & empowerment program from Africa. My church, First Methodist Mansfield, got involved with ZOE in Rwanda. The program proved successful and very unique for its concept of teaching life & business skills over a strict 3 year period vs going the way of being a hand-out program. ZOE came to Guatemala in 2012 and we are here visiting and encouraging classes (or as they call themselves Teams) of 1st year, 2nd year, and some 3rd year Teams from villages all around Quetzaltenango (Xela for short).
Team Success, a group of ZOE 1st years who only started in May of this year, is based in the village of Espumpuja. THAT was a bus ride I will never forget (thank you Jesus!). They met us on a second floor balcony, the girls in beautiful traditional Mayan dress, one by one as they handed us a bouquet of flowers and took us by the hand to a chair. For the next hour they sang for us, presented there dreams of the businesses they wanted to start, and simply made opened their hearts. Such love and pride for a Team of kids who seemingly (from a screwed up American perspective) had so little.
One friend I met was Johana Heidi a 15-year old girl who wants to build a successful fruit and snack store. What really grabbed me about Johana’s dream though was her real master plan. In her words “The fruit shop is only in my dream to help me get enough money to ride the bus. What I really want to do is go to school to become a Doctor and open a clinic. Being a Doctor would allow me to help so many people and provide good money to take care of my family.” You go girl!
Then we were invited to follow beautiful young mother Iris to her home up a pretty fierce hill. Iris welcomed us in to see where her, her baby, her mother, and her grandmother all happily live together. The house was tidy and well laid out with all her hard work evident around us; the outdoor kitchen (in the picture below) with some thing cooking, the rooster, the crops behind the house, and the cute new puppy running around.
After a full day being encouraged by meeting ZOE staff and Team Success, evening worship was great. We looked at John 1:1-4 to be reminded by John that to really know Jesus is to know with with all your senses… seeing him, hearing him, and touching him. Pretty sure we did some Jesus seeing, hearing, and touching today!
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