We've had a really crazy last few weeks with El Salvador national elections, people coming to visit, a little team crisis which I will explain further later, and finally the spring break team from Cal Poly, SLO coming for a week from the 22nd to the 28th. There were no less than 30 people! This was way bigger than the team of 13 that I came with last year and bigger than most other spring break trips that SLO Crusade has ever sent, domestic trips included. The idea of that many people coming was a bit daunting in the wake of the things just mentioned, but it turned out to be such a blessing and boost of energy for our team.

The 30th passenger on the airpline from LA was a secret passenger, and happened to be Matt Hall, my teammate Brenna's boyfriend. He told some of the rest of us previously that he would be coming down with the spring break team to see and propose to Brenna and that we had to keep it a secret! So Trev picked him up at the airport behind everyone else that had just left in the vans, and brought him to the girls house where Brenna couldn't wait to jump on skype to talk to him when she got there. He stayed in one of the other rooms as she came in, talked to her online for a bit, and went and knocked on her door, ring in pocket. She opened it to him on a knee and asking if she would marry him, to which she could only reply "Oh.... my.... GOSH," which was followed by a pause and Matt having to ask the question again, to which she finally exclaimed, "Yes!!!" I had the pleasure of taking some engagement photos for them.


On Sunday we took the team out to Juayua where we exposed them to all kinds of exotic native foods and street shopping, then took them to a coffee plantation along La Ruta de Los Flores. I hadn't been there since our first week in El Salvador so it was great to go back. The team ordered all kinds of cake and pie and awesome fresh coffee and had fun hiking around the beautiful plantation. It was so fun seeing how new and exciting everything was to them and reminded me of how it felt for me the first month or so that I was here. It reminded me of how cool and interesting this place really is, when a lot of things have just gotten so commonplace. Trevor heard Dustin Yoder (a Crusade intern in SLO) exclaiming one day as they waked by some random tree, "This is a ficus!" I thought it was so funny how crazy they thought the driving was and how amazed they were with my ease as they held on tight as I dodged motorcycles, cars coming into my oncoming lane, and unpredictable roundabout traffic. One student asserted "Wow, you're going to get so many tickets when you get back to the states!" Again, I guess I've just gotten really used to some things here!

Hunting for food in Juayua. Get the frog!

Feeding the animals at the plantation.

I had been put in charge as our team's outreach leader to plan a campus outreach for the team to participate in, which would end in a big "fiesta" for all of us and Salvadorean students on Wednesday night. The idea that the Spirit led me to was a "Heroes" themed outreach, which originally came to mind as I thought about how funny it would be if everyone dressed up as superheroes on campus for a few days. That didn't happen, but we did make a survey that asked questions like "Who are your heroes?", "What are qualities of heroes?" and "What kinds of sacifices has your hero made? How has this affected you?" We also had two huge blank banners that we posted up in the hallways with the latter two questions for people to freely respond to by writing down their thoughts. We had the outreach from Monday to Wednesday but after one day they were completely full!

One of the discussion walls we put up. Sooo full.

Spring breakers brought so much enthusiasm to both Matias campuses (we finally got access to Campus 2!) and the Lord blessed them with so many amazing conversations and so many students He had prepared for hearing the gospel taking the next step in their faith. My team heard story after story after story of good conversations whether or not the survey was used, and they came out of those three days on campus loving Salvadorean students and really seeing a spiritual hunger and need for Jesus on both campuses.

The Wednesday night party was indeed hero themed and I dressed up as our director Layo, a costume which included khaki pants, a short sleeve button up shirt with plenty of chest hair showing and a towel stuffed into my shirt for a belly. He and his wife loved it. It was fun. It was great to do some line-dancing again with people who still got "the fever" from SLO, see students interacting with some Salvadoreans, have some great pupusas for dinner, and watch a Spiderman piñata torn limb from limb.

On Thursday we went to Victoria, our favorite town out in the boonies of El Salvador by the Honduran border to do some humanitarian work out there. I spent the day bonding with some awesome spring break guys (and one girl -- yeah Sarah Kelly!) as we painted a church building. Other students played soccer with some high schoolers (getting their butts handed to them) and others spent some quality time with some small school children. It was an awesome fun, rewarding day. On Friday we had a beach day where a bunch of people surfed, many for the first time and others sat and had fresh fruit smoothies ("frozens") by the pool. We had fun hanging out and having great conversations about the week, and even about the possiblity of some spring breakers coming back for STINT (maybe even next year!)




A school in Victoria (photo by Joe)

They left on Saturday and we took both Monday and Tuesday off of campus to recover! But it was so incredible having them here, helping to give us a big boost of energy to go back on campus and win students to Christ with passion.

(Also a school in Victoria.)