Sick and Soccer...

So, the week after Christmas was definitely a busy and interesting one...it started the day after Christmas: a family from Dave and Kathy's church in Canada came down for the week. While they were here, they put on a soccer camp. Their three daughters (16, 19, 21) have played soccer all their lives, and their dad has coached their teams at different times. So, they put together this great soccer camp for kids ages 10-12 in this area. They brought 4 different-colored t-shirts for the teams, they brought a ton of balls, and they planned different drills and games to play each of the three days. Of course they also incorporated a devotion each day. They planned a little mini tournament for the end of the camp, and they had trophies for the winning team and medals for everyone else. The kids had a blast!

The same day they arrived, we started our first ever youth soccer tournament. It lasted 5 days in which 5 teams played for about 4 hours each day, and at the end of the week there was a playoff game and a championship game. It too was a ton of fun! Check out the video from our tournament! The championship day was a Saturday, and after the tournament was over we had our Noche De Vida event. That means "Night of Life!", and it's something we do each month (our youth ministry is named "Life!") in order to try and bring in new youth, etc. It usually consists of something fun, worship, a message, and a time of prayer. There were a ton of kids there that night since half the teams were made up of kids who have never been part of the youth ministry. It was pretty neat.

The kink in the week was that I got sick that Wednesday with a stomach flu. That illness doesn't hit me often, but when it does it's REALLY bad. So, I was out of commission for about three days. Mili and Sandy ended up coming and taking care of me since I live by myself. I was pretty much recovered by the time they came, but it was very sweet of them, and I was glad to have the company after being by myself essencially for 2 days at that point. Being sick, of course, meant that I missed half of both soccer events. I didn't get to see the end of the soccer camp, but I did get to go to the final day of the youth tournament and to the youth event afterwards. It was a good time. And I'm certainly glad to be healthy again.

Well, enjoy the pics and video!

Kids Soccer Camp stretching warm-up excercises!

This was one of their drill/games. It's the numbers drill. Each kid on each team has a number. When the ref called a number, the kids with those numbers had to come out and try to get a goal in a certain amount of time.

Devotions

Youth Soccor Tournament "Video"