Hello friends and family! We loved the opportunity of being Leader of the Day (LDD), which means we are in charge of waking everyone up at 7am and explaining today’s agenda and activities. So let us tell you what we did today…!

Today we woke up at 6:30am and knocked on everyone’s doors to wake them up. For breakfast, we had cheesy mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, pineapples and papaya, and fruit juice. We had of bit down time, and then had a seminar on our Community Action Project (CAP). We talked about how it’s important to learn specifically what the youth in poorer communities want to help them with the most. We talked about how aid doesn’t work without development, meaning that in order to make a positive, lasting impact, we have to make sure the project is sustainable.

Then we got ready to go on the bus with Sandy to visit the city Barrio Las Flores to meet our guest speaker Juanjo Castillo. It was truly an honor to talk with him about his life experiences and how he had to go out in the streets to get the love he wanted and needed, but never got from his family. Juanjo grew up in Barrio Las Flores, where the people only have a sixth grade education or less, but Juanjo turned his life around. He founded Cristo el Rey, which was a organization focused on helping the youth and keeping them out of the streets by playing sports. Also, Juanjo saw himself in all of the young men he met and wanted to give an alternative vision of how they could live life better. Juanjo and the other members of the community are passionate about having a better future and education, and Juanjo’s nephew was able to get a scholarship at Wheaton College in Chicago. One of the greatest challenges that the youth go through is trying to survive and make money.

After we got back to the hotel, we talked more about narrowing down our Community Action Project (keeping in mind our budget and time limit). Although it took some debate, we finally decided that we will be remodeling the baseball field with several steps. Since we all talked to a person in the youth group, they gave us advice on what they needed most in their community. First, we want to focus on putting in metal doors, fixing the fences, and adding barbed wire so that strangers can’t come in and liter the field/disrupt the team. Next, we want to fill in holes in the walls with cement. We also want to add painted garbage cans to keep the field clean. Lastly, if we have time, we want to repaint areas in the wall.

For dinner, the Global Glimpse Leaders surprised us with pizza!! We had a great time being the first Leaders of the Day, but our group advised us to talk louder next time since we’re both soft-spoken.

Overall today was a ton of fun and a valuable learning experience, and it got even better when we also got a disco ball, which our whole group has been wanting since day 2.

Love, Neziah and Sage ❤️