Preparing for the Team

Our first short-term team will be arriving tomorrow at 3:00pm if all goes according to plan. We will be hosting 25 college students coming to serve through Texas’ TBarM camps. The team will be focusing on sports ministry within various high schools in Tarma. The four days that they will be doing ministry here will be a whirlwind, but we are excited to have them. The kids are coming down over their spring break, which is part of the reason that their time will be limited. Meredith, Elsa and I talked with the team last night as they were getting ready to begin their travels, and it sounds like things are already going wrong, with canceled flights and an added 15-hour van ride to Atlanta in order to make their flight down to Peru. Please be praying for the TBarM team that all the kids make their flights and connections on-time, and that they will be able to arrive to Peru without further delays or problems.
Here on our end, I’m learning a lot about what goes into hosting a short-term team. And I know have way more respect for all those adult leaders who organized trips that I went on in high school and college. Meredith has taken most of the preparations upon herself, but Elsa and I have been helping too. Elsa has been in charge of organizing breakfast and dinner each day through the restaurant of one of our contacts. I also have organized a lunch and a dinner for the team at two other known restaurants in town, a chicken place and a ceviche place. I was also in charge of making that all-important emergency contact card for the kids to have with them at all times. Don’t want to lose any gringos in Tarma while the team is here! On their first night here, Meredith and I will be presenting a cultural orientation to the kids, to get them a little more accustomed to the cultural norms here. Then the rest of the week we will go in and out of schools doing sports ministry. Of course, our daily ministry responsibilities don’t change when a team comes, and we as the Tarma team will be responsible for continuing on with our Bible studies, and I will continue with my English classes.
All in all, I’m really excited for this first team, and to spend some time with younger kids that are now doing what I once did at their age. I’m excited for a week of getting to speak a little more English than normal, and just to have a break in the normal routine. Please be praying for the ministry this week, that God would open a lot of doors in the various schools and the lives of the kids we will be spending time with.