The south side of Bogota, Colombia, climbs into a massive hillside where roughly two million people are fighting to survive.
Twenty-five years ago, the hillside was tar paper shacks and tin roofs, thrown up on land that wasn’t theirs. No water. No sewer. No electricity. The families were country folk fleeing Colombia’s guerrilla and paramilitary wars.
The shacks are mostly gone now. Houses are clay block, some four stories tall. The main street is paved. Water and electricity run from the city.
But the gangs remain. The drugs. The prostitution. Adolescent pregnancies. Roughly 80% of families fatherless, with mothers gone 12 to 16 hours a day. Ghetto grandparents who never learned to read.
At the very top of that hillside sits a barrio called Santo Domingo.
For a kid born here, the normal cultural course is gangs, drugs, dropping out of school, and often an early death. The rest of the city writes them off before they ever start.
This is what we’re rescuing kids from.
Meet Stiven.
Stiven Ospina grew up here. Same shacks. Same pull of gangs and drugs.
But a local pastor caught his attention. The man lived what he preached. He took Stiven under his care, and Stiven gave his life to Jesus. It changed his history.
Today, many of Stiven’s peers from his childhood who stayed on the normal Santo Domingo course are dead. Others are alive because of Stiven’s influence.
He met Andrea when they were teenagers. They fell in love, married, and have three children: Mariana, Sophia, and Martin. He plays piano, guitar, and drums, and leads worship at his church. Andrea works at a Christian school. Together, they could have lived a quiet, “made it out” life outside the barrio.
They didn’t.
January 2025.
In January of 2025, Stiven and Andrea made a crucial decision. Earn a subsistence income with both parents working, or take a leap of faith, trust God for their support, and put Stiven into ministry full time. With three kids. In Latin America. That’s gutsy.
Andrea kept her job at the school. Stiven works full time now, in the very barrio he came out of, going against everything that says these kids are a lost cause.
His tool? Soccer.
Soccer is the doorway.
Soccer is passion in Latin America. It can keep a young mind busy, focused, pointed forward. For a kid in Santo Domingo, the choice is stark: the violent gangs of the barrio, or the camaraderie of a soccer team. One leads to defeat and often death. The other leads to character, competitiveness, and life skills that can break a generational curse.
Stiven, as head coach of our Futbol Club Amigos, knows soccer is the doorway. The real work happens on Monday afternoons. Two hours he calls “Conociendo el Corazon del Joven” (Knowing the Heart of the Young Person). Bible teaching. Discipleship. Christian values. Faithful attendance is a requirement if a player wants to stay on the team.
Practices run two hours after school on Tuesday and Thursday. Two more hours at dawn on Saturdays. And on Mondays, Jesus.
Champions.
The rest of Bogota writes these kids off before they ever lace up a cleat. Wrong neighborhood. Wrong family. Wrong future.
Tell that to our under-15 Futbol Club Amigos team. They beat ten other teams in their division to take the championship. The tough training, the focus, the obstacles overcome, all of it paid off for this group of never-give-up boys. Our under-17 team took second place. They too are resilient and persevering. The little ones, ages 7 to 12, both boys and girls, are climbing toward a bar that keeps rising.
Kids the city had already discounted. Champions.
Behind every one of those wins is a boy who could have been in a gang, on the streets, or already dead. Instead, he’s on a team, with a coach who knows his name, and a Father in heaven who knows his future.
How You Can Pray
- For Stiven, Andrea, Mariana, Sophia, and Martin as they trust God for their full-time ministry support.
- For the 30 players ages 7 to 20 facing gang and drug pressure off the field.
- For additional coaches to come alongside Stiven as the team grows.
- For safe transportation to the practice field and tournaments.
- For breakthrough on the paperwork with the government sports institute, so the team keeps the city practice field.
- For the mothers working 12 to 16 hour days, that God would sustain them and reach their families.
- For the Monday discipleship time, that hearts would open to Jesus.
For decades, Streams of Mercy has stood with Formando Vidas in Bogota. Uniforms. Transportation. Snacks. Tournament fees. The steady rhythm of practice and discipleship that turns kids the city writes off into champions.
The work continues. So does the WINNING.
Â
