FIEL Before FIEL

Chas first went to Cuba in March 2012 with Prestonwood Christian Academy (PCA). He returned in 2013, his senior year of high school. The experiences had a big impact on him, bringing him closer to his own Cuban roots. He helped to lead the PCA group in 2014 and 2015 while a college student at Rice University. On these trips he cultivated close friendships with the Cuban people, especially Antonio Leal, his interpreter (pictured with Chas on left side below, 2012-2015). In 2014, Antonio and his older brother Arturo asked if Chas would consider bringing soccer equipment for the soccer ministry they had started in their Havana suburb, Alamar. Chas prayed about it and shortly afterwards received a generous donation as confirmation that this was something he should do. He brought the soccer equipment which helped get the brothers' soccer ministry, CVC, off the ground. When he was delivering the soccer equipment to Arturo and Antonio and spending time with their ministry in 2015, Chas had an idea: what if he took the discipleship strategies he had seen work so powerfully at Rice University through Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship and applied them to this soccer ministry in Alamar, Cuba? This idea in many ways was the beginning of FIEL International. (Some photos from these initial trips are below.)