Pray and support the Chan Chen Project

I was out in the small Mayan Village of Chan Chen this week and had a great time sharing and planing with the community leaders. There are many needs in this poor village. Your heart would break to see how some of these people are just surviving on almost nothing. For almost two years now I have been bringing food and clothing out to these people and they are always glad to see us but the only thing that has changed in these two years is that now there are even more poor people in the village. So I have been talking to the leaders trying to understand the source of the poverty and how we can really make a difference.



Maybe this is over simplifying the problem but there are no jobs in the village so the men move out to tourist zone or the US in search of work to feed the family. When they move if they do find work it is often the lowest paying jobs and they also discover that the cost of living in the tourist towns is very high. Most will have very little if any money to send back to the family in the village. The separation is hard on the family and many of the men never return to the village and the kids and women are there living on our handouts.





It is easy to get overwhelmed in the face of a giant problem like poverty. It is true that we can not to everything but we can to something.



This is my dream, to help create an opportunity for some men to have paying jobs in the village and those who choose to leave be better trained so they could find the better jobs in the tourist zone.



I want to start by building a small mission center hotel in the village to house volunteer teams. If we can bring four teams a year that will mean that 6 Mayan families will be able to stay together. The small hotel could employ as many as 10 men . That would mean that about 50 children would now have a father in the home and money to support the family.

This center would also be a training center teaching English and the other skills needed to find the higher paying jobs if they decide to leave the village.



I believe this mission center will show the love of Christ and many will come to Salvation.



I want to build 6 units and each unit will cost about $11.000.



If you would like to know more about how you can help email me. doug@church-in-playa.com