Empty Nesters

I’ve always heard that parents have a tough time when their kids go off to college.  I never  understood that until last month when 4 of our girls graduated from our VC Revolution program.   To be apart of our volleyball ministry, girls can start at any age and as they get better, they can move up to become a “varsity” player.  Throughout their years in our program, there are pretty high expectations of achieving certain grades, being a good role model in the community, as well as intense volleyball training.  We have had the opportunity to coach and disciple many girls for multiple years.  However, this past year was the first time that we actually had to “graduate” 4 Dominican girls from our varsity team.  Mabelis Acevedo  and Loreidy Hernandez have been a part of VC Revolution for 4 years, Dianny Moronta-3 years, and Caroly Trinidad-2 years. 

I wish these girls could have stayed on varsity forever, but I knew we had to push them out of the nest.  However, many of them come from extremely poor homes and do not have money to attend college.  Thankfully, we were able to find sponsors for all of the girls to attend a great college about 25 minutes away.   We hope to find more sponsors to help cover transportation and books, but we are so thankful to have come this far.  In return for their scholarships, the girls will volunteer 15 hours a week as assistant coaches within VC Revolution or help at other ministry sites.  So not only will they be attending college, but they will continue to pour back to girls from their community.   For most of these girls, they were the first in their family to even graduate high school! Now, they are really going above and beyond to attend college.

Caroly and Rachel

One neat story of how God has already starting using these girls is through our community health site.  Rachel Snider, who is in charge of that site, asked if I had anyone charismatic and organized who could be an assistant at her site.   Immediately, Caroly popped into my mind since she is great with people, and because of our training for our states trip last summer, is pretty fluent in English.  So for the past two months, she has been going out into communities, ministering to the Dominicans, translating for the Americans, and being a great help to Rachel and her site. I am so proud to see these girls, who have been a part of our ministry for so long, start to really give back and serve alongside Students International.  Even though we have had some girls leave our nest, God continues to bless us with tons of new girls.  I am so thankful to be a part of this ministry which allows us to disciple girls and then equip them with the tools they need so that they can go out and FLY! 

Triple Header!

During these past two weeks,  I was reminded is so much bigger than I think.  His plans seemed to just BLOW my plans out of the water.  I headed into this past outreach a bit worried because we had to accomplish three big things. Our triple header.  First time ever Purity Ceremony/Senior Graduation. First  time ever volleyball camp.  Figure out a way to incorporate high schoolers in first two.  But, for cliche sake, gotta say it, God hit a grand-slam during this outreach.

First Challenger: Purity Ceremony/ Senior Graduation
This past week, we combined two important events into one big celebration. A purity ceremony as well as the graduation of our 5 seniors.  As a result of our purity ceremony, many of our varsity players decided to write out 10 promises they wanted to keep for their lives.  Not only that, but they invited their families, youth pastor, other VC Revolution teams, and other friends to be witnesses to this event.  It was an absolutely beautiful thing to see the girls nervously, but confidently read their promises in front of everyone. They proceeded to sign their contracts and receive pearl necklaces to remember their commitment.  Thank you to Blythefield Hills church for donating the special necklaces, the girls LOVE them.  Many families and parents were moved by the girls courage to do something like this.  One of our girls, Keysi, commented that it was only the second time in her life that she saw her mom crying.  We also invited the youth pastor to come and give a little talk about the influence parents can have on the girls lives.  It was a really neat thing for many of these families who never go to church to get connected with someone from our local church.  The senior graduation part was also incredibly moving as certain underclassmen talked about each senior.  Lots of tears were shed and it was a really neat time of remembering the great times we have shared with our seniors.  Its crazy to think some of these girls have played for VC Revolution for almost 4 years now and will now be going to college!!!


Second Challenger: Volleyball Camp
We wanted to try something this year to get more people from the community involved.  We hosted a weeklong volleyball camp with the morning session being 6-11 year olds and then in the afternoon 12-18.  It was a neat experience that we'll hopefully get more girls involved next year. But this year was fun!

Keysi teaching in the morning session.

Right before water balloon fun! 

Morning session: Ages 6-11

Afternoon Session: Ages 12-1

Third Challenger: Incorporate American Outreach Participants
Outreaches in the summer last 2 weeks.  Each American gets the chance each outreach to share a testimony/devotional at least once during their time here.  One of the first practices, we were all moved to tears by the devotion given by one of our high school girls.  Seriously, God blessed us with a 16-year-old preacher who has an incredible gift of writing/public speaking. SO. She became our guest speaker for our entire volleyball camp.  At the end of the week, numerous girls commented on how one of their favorite parts of the the outreach was her talks.  Another cool thing was that one of the americans was a Zumba instructor. SO. We got her to lead warm-ups each day for the girls.  By the last day of camp, the older girls kept wanting to keep doing ZUMBA and not go play volleyball!!! Here's a video of one of our jam sessions!

 It was a beautiful thing to see how God did things we totally didn't expect.  I was reminded me to remember that no matter how good of ideas I THINK I have, I need to hope and EXPECT that God will do even bigger things!