Siloam.....Over the Horizon: Christmas Youth Soccer Tournament

Today, we started our Christmas soccer tournament with the youth. This is the second year we have done this, and the youth really enjoy it, even those who sit on the sidelines and watch! It's a fun time to fellowship and reach out, which part of it's purpose: to draw new kids in. The team leaders are encouraged to be leaders not just in soccer but also spiritually among their teams, and they do a good job of it!

We got off to a good start today. This year Steve is not here, so he left Chuy and Martin in charge. They have been in charge of registration, and then just before Christmas they took care of picking team leaders and drafting the five teams that will participate. I'm so out of my league with something like this, so it's really refreshing to have these two student leaders stepping up to the plate on this. They have made this part of "running" things in Steve's absence SO much easier.

There are five teams, and they play 7 games of speed soccer each day today and tomorrow. Then Friday they will play 6, by the end of which one team will be eliminated. Finally, on Saturday they will play the semi-final (2 games) and the championship games. We're also having a whole-church pot-luck gathering on Saturday to watch not only our youth semi-finals and championship but also to watch the championship game for the adult men's soccer tournament that has been going on every Saturday this month. So, Saturday should be a really fun day! At the end of those games, we'll hand out trophies and awards for winning teams, best goalies (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place) and most goals (1st, 2nd, and third place). This is a blast! Yea for fun during Christmas vacation.

Heather had a good time at the games today, too. She spent time hanging out and chatting with the girls, and it was so fun to watch her building friendships with them. It's such a blessing to have a part of my family here to experience this first hand! Yea God!

I'm posting some pictures. Keep in mind there were seven games played by five teams (Red, Black, Yellow, Blue, & White). I'm not posting pics from ALL the games, because pictures of boys playing soccer are going to all look fairly similar. So, although I have about 30 pictures from today, I'll only post some highlights here! Enjoy!