Day 4 Update!

Buenos Dias!

We had another great and full day yesterday!

In the morning, half of us spent a couple hours working on the soccer field. We used shovels and pickaxes to dig a trench on the far side of the field, moving a lot of rocks and dirt. It was a great time of hard work, and our impromptu trivia game helped the time go by quicker (Benji was the clear cut winner, and it featured a lot of good Disney princess questions from Coach Faro). A group of us are preparing to go back out there and continue the trench today.

As we were doing that, some of our guys were helping coach in different sectors or neighborhoods, and a group was at the stadium helping coach the academy. There are over 3,000 kids in the club, and it has been really cool to get to work with some of these different groups.

We played another really tough game in the afternoon versus a team called Ferrarbula. The game ended at 1-1, but that doesn't begin to tell the story. We missed a handful of clear cut chances in the first half that could have really put the game in our control. In the second half, we took the lead about midway through, and were disappointed for our opponents to be given a penalty kick in the last 5 minutes to even up the score. Despite the result, it was a great learning experience for our team in a lot of different ways. It was also an honor to see the resurrection of Coach Faro's playing career at right back. He played great and almost had both of his legs broken from a late challenge from an opponent. Sawyer Nick also got into the game late, and looked great in the Messiah white! (former Calvin College player)

We rested throughout the evening, enjoying the company of many new friends we have made around the stadium. With the implementation of the new turf field, there are always a lot of different people around the complex and it makes it easy for us to interact with them, play soccer together, and practice our Spanish!

The original plan was to go to Zamora to coach a clinic at night, but that was cancelled due to a huge event in Medellin. Nacional, the main professional team in Medellin, was in the grand final versus Boca Juniors. The whole city would be heavily invested in watching this game, including us. Our team, and everyone from the stadium went just down the street to the local family shops to watch the game in the streets. It was an unbelievable cultural experience, and Ryan Lago is going to share more on this later this afternoon, so be on the lookout for that......

Glory a Dios!

MMS