Distant Bri Bri Native Indian Village Along Panama Border Receives Gear
In the distant native indigenous Bri Bri Indian village of Yorkin, nestled and shrouded by the green canopies of primary jungle forest along the Northeast border with Panama, is a group of young boys and men who are passionate about soccer. Chaplain Hugo Venegas has worked on short term mission projects with this community for over seven years and have helped build with volunteers from Colorado and other areas in the US and Canada, the village’s water system, a health clinic, classrooms for their jungle high school, and the infra structure for their rural ecotourism project.
Chaplain Venegas on the 1 1/2 hour long canoe ride to the village of Yorkin.
When Chaplain Venegas arrived at the village after a 8-hour journey from the capital city of San Jose, all the men and boys were out working around the village, so he met with the leaders of the women’s community association to present the gear for the boys and men in the village to be outfitted for their competitive games against other village teams in the region. Chaplain Venegas commented on the trip to the village,
It was an hour and a half canoe trip to get there. The men of the village work some work on canoes, farm, or taking care of the visitors to the reservation. It’s a really neat project because everyone makes minimum wages and then all the profits get invested back into the community.
Women from the board of the Stibrawpa women’s group receiving the Colorado Rapids gear donation from CrossTraining’s Hugo Venegas.
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Recently, the Colorado Rapids cleaned house – boxes of used team gear were simply taking up too much space in the confines of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and after the annual “garage sale” for Rapids fans, there was still plenty left over. That’s when team staff contacted Rapids Chaplain Brad Kenney. The text message read:
Chaplain Venegas sprang into action – putting some messages out to contacts in Costa Rica. Is there anyone who could use some team gear and equipment for their church or a local team? Pretty soon, Chaplain Venegas had 4 different project requests coming out of Costa Rica – a player training with a team in hopes of getting a contact in Major League Soccer, a church group praying for new team uniforms, and a couple of reservations with poor, indigenous people. As Chaplain Kenney opened the boxes, it was almost too overwhelming…Do you have an idea of sizes? (read a text message to Venegas).
I just remember looking at all the boxes in my living room, my children were trying to help me sort and count, and I panicked – what were we gong to do with all of the gear? Will we have enough? Too much?
On the last day of 2013, there is occasion to pause for reflection. There is much debate around looking backward in order to move forward in our culture. Some criticism – that the only reason we look back is so that we can make more efficient our practice or modernize our mechanistic attitude. Some wisdom – that we ought to learn from mistakes and strive to not repeat them, to teach our children how to overcome them. Some practical application – goal-setting, resolutions, and the like. Some fantastical dreaming – see above.