After spending five months in Asia, we traveled over to begin our four months in Central America in El Salvador.
Our team spent the month in a small town outside of San Salvador called Nuevo Cuscatlan, where we worked with the organization Sports Outreach Institute. Through SOI we were able to serve the beautiful people of Nuevo Cuscatlan in a variety of ways and were able to experience many aspects of their daily lives. Our host was a native of El Salvador and was very passionate about showing us his beautiful country which led to some awesome adventures.
Here are a few snapshots of the ministries we were a part of and the adventures we had in El Salvador-
We helped out with P.E. at a local school. Lots and lots of soccer was played throughout the month
But sometimes P.E. for me meant braiding hair and picking flowers with these girls who quickly adopted me into their clique, despite my lack of Spanish speaking abilities:
We practiced soccer with SOI’s soccer team on Saturdays. They have a few different teams; the picture below is of their youngest team with their coach. After every Saturday practice someone from our team would share a short message from the bible.:
We taught English, mostly focusing on vowel sounds and pronunciation. It was fun to be able to use a lot of what I had learned through teaching in Tucson to teach my students in El Salvador. Our team also was able to share about the bible with our students at the end of every class.
We helped facilitate bracelet making in a local community. Many of the kids and young adults sell the bracelets they make with SOI to help buy things their family needs:
We went on a lot of adventures to see the beautiful sites of El Salvador. We saw volcanoes, Mayan ruins, the beach, and swam in a crater lake called Coatepeque Caldera (pictured below)
Our team met two congressmen who showed us tremendous generosity. They took our team to lunch and answered all our questions about El Salvador and gave us all our own bag of delicious El Salvador coffee.
And finally, El Salvador ended with a final team change:
I loved getting to see so many aspects of El Salvador and be a part of sharing the gospel with the people there. It was a great start to our time in Central America and I’m excited for the rest of my time here!
P.S. Sorry for the delayed update- blog on Honduras coming soon!
