Bootcamp!

I gasped as I saw Edely pass out after just 10 minutes of Survivor Boot Camp. “Oh no,” I thought. “What in the world have I gotten my girls into?”  This year, 11 girls have volunteered to be a part of our Frontera discipleship program because they wanted to grow in their walk with God.  In addition to bible study in the classroom, we took them on trips to help stretch them to depend on God. On one of our adventure weekends, we did a “Survivor” theme which included bringing in one of our missionaries who used to serve in the Dominican Army.  As a part of this team building weekend, he took the girls through a typical “boot camp” training.   The girls had to remain mentally tough while their drill sergeant barked orders at them.  Like Edely, many girls hit breaking points when they thought they couldn’t go on.  However, after a five minute break and pep-talk, every single girl gained the strength and courage to march back to their platoon.  

Crew lining up to start "boot-camp"

Tough girls after completing 3 hours of training!

Once the weekend was completed, all the girls were elated with pride. They realized that as a team, they overcame something really hard and were stronger for it!

We also did a missions trip to a poor city in the Dominican Republic called "Caraballo". The girls helped out the local missionaries with their Awana program as well as helped with some construction projects.  It was neat to see the girls really using their gifts to serve the Lord.  After walking through the neighborhood, they were also astonished to see the even greater proverty. 

Stephanie helping out with Awana

Mabelis, Ashley and Mary-Emily helping to pour cement!

Girls after carrying 100+ loads of rocks and dirt!

After a days work... Champs! 

I feel so blessed to be a part of this sports ministry in the Dominican Republic.  Just like enduring “boot camp”, many of these girls have to work hard and push through tough things in their lives.  Most of them come from fatherless and/or abusive homes and must choose to lift themselves up and courageously run to the Lord. Through our volleyball teams and discipleship program, we are really starting to see these grow into girls who are discovering what it means to find victory in the Lord.  God is good and I’m thankful to fight on his side!

Pee-Wee!!!

So, I'd like to attribute my lack of blog posts to my incredible work ethic that just pours out Jesus' love into girls that I just don't have time write on blog.  Unfortunately, that's not 100% true.  I am pouring out Jesus' love, but I'm afraid thats not directly correlated with my scarce blogging. Anyways, enough excuses.  I apologize that it's been so long. I'm going to try to break up the things that have been happening over the next couple blog posts.  But since I'm assuming you are busy too... its going to be a lot of pictures and less talking!

Event #1: We split up VC Revolution into "seasons"

We found it was hard to really pour into all our girls when we were running 4-5 teams at once. So this year we split up our teams into seasons. Three teams play from May-Dec and the others Jan-July.  This has been a great thing and has allowed us to really invest in these girls. Take a look!

My "teenager" team from Corocito.

Dianny (far right) is one of our graduated girls that will be attending college as well as helping coach the girls from her community. 

Freshman team- Coached by Chelsie Blackburn

These are girls from all over town that are mainly freshmen. Chelsie has really invested in these girls during their season and they have improved so much! 

Loreidy (far right) just finished her first semester at college while serving as the Freshman assistant coach. 

Pee-Wee Team

Great group of girls from Corocito that are 10&11 yrs. old. We just started this team this year and they have done such a great job! 

Another picture of some of our pee-wees because they are just so cute! 

Stay tuned... In the next blog post I'll be talking about our new discipleship program including their experiences of "boot camp"