Written by: Logan McFadden
 
Day 2 in El Salvador! It was the first full day of the trip and everyone's energy was so much higher after a long travel day yesterday. We were all excited for what was planned for the day and we can definitely say we ended the day on empty!

Our first activity was to intermix with the Sports Outreach team from Honduras. We were able to intermix and just play a round robin game of three teams. Although very few people are able to have conversations with each other due to the language barrier, we were all able to use our abilities in soccer to connect with people. It was a cool opportunity to play on the same team with a complete stranger that you can't even communicate with but at the same time connect with them through their love for the sport and also the love for Jesus. I could tell the heart that the Sports Outreach leaders had for this community and this organization. 
 
The next thing was playing with the kids from the neighbor. There were three groups. Group one was young kids playing soccer and having fun. Group two was playing basketball, and this was a new sport that Sports Outreach was introducing to the community. Finally Group three was another group of soccer players who were older and wanting to get better. 
 
The team dispersed between the three groups and I was amazed at what I got a chance to witness. To have everyone be fully present in whatever group they were in and just love on the group of kids that were in those groups. Becoming friends and making connections with people that you can barely communicate with is a unique thing. Everyone is out of their comfort zone in some capacity and we are faced with a choice: We can just embrace it and dive in or just try to get by and become standoffish? Just taking in moments to look around and be in awe of everyone actively choosing to dive in deeper and embrace where the Lord has brought all of us is beautiful. 
 
As we concluded the end of our first full day, I know that we are seeing God move through our group and the people that we interacted with and I can't wait to see what God has in store for this group as the rest of this week progresses.