Rio Bravo Church and Feeding Center

Whew! What a day! This morning, after a 3:30 am wake up call, we headed out for Rio Bravo Church and Feeding Center. Rio Bravo is a small, poor, farming town in southwest Guatemala about 30 miles from the Pacific coast. Our drive was about 2 1/2 hours, but the scenery was absolutely amazing. Along the route were numerous volcanoes, huge sugarcane and corn fields, rivers and other unbelievable views.  This was some of the most beautiful country any of us had ever seen. 

Pastor Freddie is the leader of this church and he and Bob and Georgette Kornegay have a great relationship.  Every two weeks, Bob delivers nearly three tons of food to the church. This food is used to feed an average of 200 children breakfast seven days a week. The ministry that Bob and Georgette are associated with provide this food free of charge to the church. This meal is typically the only full meal these children receive each day and Bob says you can see huge improvements in the health of these children after only a few months of these nutritious meals. It was also a special occasion to get to hear the children sing praise songs and pray before the meal.  

After breakfast, we distributed the 270 pairs of shoes we had remaining and what a powerful event this was. The children and mothers were so grateful for the new shoes.

A number of the children had no shoes prior to today and those that came with shoes definitely left with better ones. 

Happy children with new shoes!

These were actually some of Forrest's old shoes. It was awesome to know that someone else could get some more use out of them.

Bob had recently installed this new ultraviolet light, water purification system in the church.  This system can purify 15 gallons of water per minute and the storage tanks hold over 1300 gallons of purified water.  This purified water is used by all of the residents in the area. Bob is standing in front of the system explaining how it works...It is really moving to see and hear just how passionate Bob is about this ministry. "La sed no mas" is written on the side of one of the tanks...In English, this translates, "thirst no more"! This is the motto of Bob's water purification ministry. Clean water is nearly impossible to aquire from a well in Guatemala due to the lack of sewer treatment facilities. Therefore, most people drink water that they catch off of their roofs and then keep in open drums in their homes. This non-treated water usually contains bacteria and parasites that cause huge health issues for the Gautemalan's, especially the children. The clean, purified water that is produced by the systems Bob installs is valuable beyond belief.  

This is Pastor Freddie with us...He is originally from Nicaragua and has built four churches in the area. Pastor Freddie began the feeding center after seven children in his church died from malnutrition. After these deaths, he vowed to feed the children of this community no matter what the cost.

 This is another water purification system that Bob has recently installed a few miles down the road from the church at Rio Bravo in another small community. This water will also be available for everyone in the community. Day 3 will be Guatemalan Bible Seminary of Chimaltenango and a visit to a small school.