Orphanage, Basketball and a day in Veracruz

The group after some big adventures in Veracruz

Our rafting guides.

So I'm a bit late in posting.  Oh well.  Here's a bunch of pictures and a few words describing the past couple days.  This week was all about tream-building for our team from the States.  We will pretty much conclude the "training camp" portion of the tour today and tomorrow begin our more ministry-minded section of the tour, integrating more with the teams we will be playing with.

On Friday morning we had another practice with the Tec team, bright and early at 8am.  It was rough, to say the least.

Tec de Monterrey Puebla gym and team.

Scrimmaging with the team.

Lunch on Tec campus after a tough practice.

Karli, Shelley and Abbey

Amy

Marnie and Mandi

After practice we headed to the orphanage we have been working with and going to play with these amazing kids.

Soccer was, of course, the preferred sport.

Karli found some good competition.

This is Monica, she plays for UDLAP and she and a few of her teammates came to the orphanage with us!

Irma, Chawis and Monica- UDLAP players

Irma

Some of the little kids playing

I tend to get carried away in the competition.

Chuka, an UDLAP player, doing arts and crafts with the boys.

Courtney playing a game with the boys.

Marnie playing around on the playground with a little monkey.

The girls are big fans of the swings.

Kami also really likes the swings.

Linda, an UDLAP player, with some girls.

The group of soccer players

Just hanging out

It must have looked appealing

Just doing some push ups

So the group was going to take a picture...

and the kids realized it...

and clearly wanted to join.

The whole group

Yost, Monica, me and Chawis

Shoot out

GOALLLL

These little ones are some of my favorities

Arts and crafts after soccer

We made little toothpick crosses

High five and pounding- it's a new favorite

This guy introduced himself as Brad Pit. 

 I like him already.

Abbey, Heath and Amy.

After the orphanage fun we headed over to John and Natalies for dinner.  We caught the kids still up and had a little fun with them.

Hudson and Lucia

Natalie is the champion of the kitchen

Yost and Marnie

I could kiss this one all day

JT teaching us some iPad tricks.

We had a great time with John and Nat. They had prepared a relationship talk for all the girls about what the Bible says about relationships.  Super insightful and great friends.


We arrived home around midnight on Friday and turned around to wake up at 5 on Saturday morning because we had a cool day planned.  We took a bus to Veracruz for some adventures, including white-water rafting, hiking, cool springs swimming and tons of other stuff we would never get to do otherwise.  This was a great opportunity for the girls to get to know each other in a different element and foster team-building.

It was also amazing to just sit back and see the beauty of the land.  There was no way that I could see anybody being able to acknowledge the creativity of the sights and not be humbled at the undeniable existence of a Creator of all of it.  God never ceases to amaze me at the things he is able to design.

Pre-rafting picture

This was the little rafting town in Veracruz that we were at.  It was beautiful.

The group with Beto, a friend of ours and our river guide for the day.

Beto took us hiking after rafting in the most gorgeous area I've ever seen.

There was even repelling down the face of this cliff.

Just jumping some rocks

This was a natural water-fall with spring water.  So we stopped for a drink.

Sarah, Shelley, Yost and I

Marnie pointing out the mangos that would just fall from the trees.  They were everywhere, and delicious.

So that was our last couple days.  Today we are heading to church, then to downtown Cholula for a scavenger hunt with some of the players from other teams.  More updates to come as God continues to make this trip exactly what he wants of it.  Hasta luego...

Pure exhaustion after these two days.