Let me tell you a story about Jacinto (this is not his real name).
Jacinto, is 19 years old and is very smart. He always was upset with me,
especially when I talked about God or spiritual topics with him. He said to me
that he was an atheist. I always was very gentle and patient with him.
One day he said that he wanted to speak with me after class. We
started talking about his beliefs and he confessed me that he was involved in
drugs and had a very bad addiction until he found Jesus. Yes I was surprised! He believed in God. What happened to
Jacinto was that after he became a Christian he did not have a good follow-up
or discipleship. He started to associate with the wrong crowd. He started to
hangout with people that were involved in Fascism (Hitler´s Fascism) and from
that he moved away from God and into atheism.
Right now Jacinto recommitted his life to Christ and he is
involved in one of the small groups that Nueva Generacion has. This is just one
story of many stories that we face every single day. This is just one issue of
many other that we deal with such as: bad behavior, drugs and
other addictions, bulling, sexual abuse, growing up without parents or without
a dad, gangs, etc.
Nueva Generacion has developed a very strong
biblically based discipleship program
that is addressing the problem of the lack of mentorship, accountability,
counseling and discipleship.
Luis
Carlos has been working with disciplining young people for more than 10 years
in Guatemala. Nueva Generacion has professional staff trained to address these
needs. Our dream is to have a good facility to meet these needs and opportunities among the youth of
Guatemala.
The
area of Antigua Guatemala has just a few places that are addressing this need
of going deeper with discipleship.
In this area there is no youth centers or a safe place for young people
to gather and learn more about Jesus. In Guatemala 61% of our population is
less than 30 years of age. New Generation has access and an open door to the
public and private schools to talk about God and the Scriptures. There are a
lot of teenagers that do not want to get close to a church but will come to a
neutral place. We are sharing with them about how to have an intimate
relationship with God instead of having a religion.
After
one year of praying and looking for the Lord’s direction and counsel from other
wise leaders, we came to realize that we need to have a physical place to
fulfill what the Lord is calling us to.
A place for growth groups and Bible study, counseling, youth meetings,
retreats, camps, sports activities and much more. We have a two-year time frame
for this project.
Nueva
Generacion is serving about 3,000 students per week with the Character
Development program and we believe 10% of these students want to grow in their
faith in Jesus through discipleship and growth groups. Young people from 12 to
20 years of age can have this opportunity to grow and deepen their walk with
Jesus Christ.
Like
Jacinto we have many other students that can benefit with this center, not only
in the area of Antigua Guatemala. This center has a space to host mission
groups and could be used to host many types of Christian activities.
How
much is this project going to cost? Around $250,000. Our budget is $125,000 to
buy the land that is large enough to include the youth center building, a
basketball and a soccer court, plus space for a parking lot. We need an additional $125,000 to construct
the Youth Center building.
We
wanted to ask you three things:
1.
Pray for this
project and pray for us in New Generation. It is very important that we have
people committed to support us with prayer. This vision is not something that
we just imagined by ourselves, it came by prayer and the guidance of the Holy
Spirit.
2.
If you want to
make a one-time donation, a monthly donation or any other gift like donate your
time to come to build, send groups from your church to help us, make a donation
in materials, please contact me or Mission Impact!
3.
Would you be
able to talk to someone about this project? Can you commit yourself to talk
with 5 people about this youth center project: family members, neighbors,
businesses, churches, small group, friends, co-workers, etc.?
