DAY 2: COAST TO COSTA

BY TAYLOR VINES AND BENJAMIN BUSH

This morning, we woke up early and had a nice breakfast at the AMCA house before we left for the day. We traveled through San Jose to La Reforma, a local prison. We expected to be playing a casual pick-up game of basketball with the inmates. Instead, we walked outside to be greeted with an applause by an opposing team in full uniform and about 100 inmates in the audience. After warming up and getting our nerves out, we were ready to play. We played a total of 48 minutes, and some highlights of the game were…

1. Shooters Kate and Meg’s multiple three pointers
2. Eli S.’ dunks and the reactions from his new fans
3. Alaina drove coast to coast AND made the shot

Although we did win the game, that was the least important thing we did while we were there. Afterwards, an inmate that served as our referee for the game repeatedly thanked us for coming and believing in them. He mentioned how they are not able to see or talk to their family and friends, so they saw us as their daughters, sons, and friends in God. They saw us as individuals that believed in the value of their second chances. We exchanged testimonies and prayed for each other while serving them lunch and getting to experience different perspectives. The desire to connect and believe in each other was greater than the language barrier dividing us.

After lunch, we traveled to Project Abraham, an after school church program that partners with Push the Rock. We played soccer, dodgeball, and shared more testimonies with elementary students. There was so much energy and genuine excitement to spend the afternoon with one another. While they did not quite understand dodgeball rules in the same way that we did, the pure joy was evident in all of our faces.

After dinner our team randomly took on the Skittle challenge, which entails blindly eating a Skittle and guessing the color. Thankfully, Griffin came in clutch with a handy bag of Skittles, where he said, “this is way better than me eating my Skittles by myself”. Not many of us could correctly guess any color, but one of the writers of today’s blog was the only one to guess every color correctly and won the Skittle challenge!

Following the intense competition, we dove into 1 John as a group and talked about the purpose of the book and analyzed the first four verses of chapter one. Our main takeaway is that fellowship is crucial to Christian life, focusing on vulnerability, intentionality, and commitment. To focus on fellowship, we got to break down walls between team members that are not broken down in a typical college journey.

Thank you for your continued prayers!! Although this is our first day, we have been blessed to see God working in miraculous ways and a lot of that comes from your dedication to our journey.