Prayer Walks

These last few days and again later this week, our AIA team is dedicating time to spend in prayer on each campus (UDLAP, UMAD, and Tec de Monterray). We're praying for the campuses in general, athletes, specific prayer requests we've seen in the teams, coaches, and administration. It's been awesome to come together as a team and pray corporately for all these things.

Last night we had a 'Posada," which is a Mexican Christmas tradition, with the Tec girls. We started by singing a traditional song (the lyrics are in a picture that will be in the photobucket soon). We divided into 2 groups. One group stayed inside the house by the front door while the rest of us went to the other side of the door, outside, with the door closed. One group sings a certain part of the song, then the other group answers with their part of the song. The video is also in the photobucket. Next, we had 2 piñatas. Things got crazy. A couple girls got hit with the stick, others were tackled... it was nuts. All I got to show for it was a couple pieces of chile candy. Not my best effort.

After the piñatas, we had a gift exchange with just slippers. I got some sweet giant, pink, fuzzy boots. So fitting. To wrap up the night, we had tamales with dessert. It was a ton of fun.

Today during practice, Coach wanted to have practice in one of the classrooms to give Jolita and I time to do our talk and also for the girls to come up with a vision statement for their team. We did a summary of all the things we've talked about as a team this year so far, and then went into the theme of Christmas. We showed the Digital Nativity Story on Youtube (if you haven't seen it, watch it), and the girls loved it. We then got to share the Gospel with them and tell them about our testimonies (the condensed versions) and how God is the reason that we're even in Mexico and working with these teams. It's amazing that we're able to share our faith on a campus in the middle of practice!

I've got a big prayer request for you... The basketball team at UMAD has a new coach as of this year. He's really hard to read and to figure out. He's the kind of coach where the players are trying to do the right things out of fear of how he's going to react. With good reason too. His approach thus far has been to clean house. He's kicked 3 girls off the team within a matter of 2 weeks for no apparent reason. One girl, he humiliated in front of the team, kicking her off and taking away her scholarship for indecent conduct in her personal life. Another girl he bought her ticket back to Ecuador where she's from and took away her scholarship... for no reason. The most recent booting was one of the captains. They had recently played the last placed team (UMAD is in first place) and lost by 2. The coach blamed the loss on this player (even though she had a good game) and kicked her off the team. Administration is turning a blind eye because the team has a great record. The girls are being treated horribly and are being motivated by fear. Please pray for a transformation in the coach's life and for the girls to have hope to hold onto that's not driven by fear.

I hope everything is awesome where you are! Happy Christmas season! We've had Christmas music on for the last couple weeks at our house and we have a tree decal on our wall as kind of a weak attempt at a Christmas tree. It'll most def stay up all year round! Love you all!