the boys in the hole, and the boys outside of the hole

two weeks ago from this last tuesday they arrived here. another basketball week. i was excited. the american team that was coming down was an AAU basketball team from kentucky. the guys were staying in the "chateau Gabriel" which is the name given to the new dorm connected to the church. it used to be Gabriel's house. we fixed it up right before the summer started.
the team would sleep, eat and meet there which is down the road maybe 200 ft. from the main dorm. This is a picture of the top of the chateau where the group ate. that's Isaiah just relaxin'. the team was coming to put on a basketball camp for 10 to 14 year old boys from a place called the 'Hole'. i have probably already told you what the 'Hole' is but i'll fill you in again. the Hole is the city waste dump where 600 families have taken squatter's rights and built homes. disgusting pigs walking around everywhere. crap and trash everywhere also. G.O. has a church and a pastor they partner with in the Hole that has a feeding center that feeds about 50 kids their only meal of the day 6 days a week. Felix is the pastor. and we signed up about 50 kids for the camp. not all the same kids because the church picks the worst off kids to provide the meals for, and some of them are really young. here we are in the church in the Hole signing kids up. you can see brandon towards the left and will in the middle. now, there is no court in the Hole so we decided to use one close enough for the kids to walk to. i believe it was a 5 min. walk to get to the court. which i don't have any pictures of. sorry, we worked on it too. another place that was trash when we first got there and looked like a million bucks for the camp week. the "club" manager doesn't take very good care of the courts. but it worked very well for our purposes.
so the team was going to be doing the camp and then play in a tournament we set up at night with three other teams. they were going to wear USA jerseys like all the sports teams that we bring down. this team once again was all 15 year olds.
the camp mornings went like this.

-Arrive at the club by 830 in the morning.
-Worship (maybe 3 songs)
-Get into lines and do team relays
-split up into teams and do drill stations
-do separate team competitions

and then it was break for lunch. we went and served the kids at the feeding center/church in the hole everyday before going back to eat our own food. then after the 2 hour siesta we would head back to have games at the court. most of the players on the AAU team were coaches and then the players who's teams weren't playing would referee the games. the camp would end around 4 in the afternoon. my job through all this was to help. lol, to do this here or that there. i kept score and reffed. i translated in the mornings. and i translated very very little. i was in charge of water a lot. which was actually very difficult at first. but by the end of the week i was pretty good at controlling the small riots that took place everytime someone wanted water.

then back to the dorm to get changed and a small rest. while the players were doing that though, i was in charge of loose ends and getting more water and ice for the games at night. it was a four team tournament and the americans always played the later game at 530. so i guess the game was more in the evening instead of night. which to tell you the truth, watching those games is just really hard for me. i want to play so bad. and this team was pretty good. they passed the ball exceptionally.

then at night i would sleep down at the chateau with the team so they would have a staff member there in case of an emergency. wonderfully, there are many fans and also air conditioning at the chateau. i keep calling it the coldest place in santiago. and i got lots of opportunities to talk to the kids. so it was a good week.
they ended up 2-2 after the week. they lost to a team called Sameji (Suh-may-he) once and then again in the championship game. but mostly for that team i hope that witnessing the poorness of the kids in the hole will stick with them. that they will realize more what life is actually about.

This was a trying week for me. it was hard to work with the kids in the hole because they are wild. they have never had a camp like this done for them and they haven't really learned discipline or order yet. it was hard to work with the americans because even though they were great kids they were only 15 and alot of them got distracted a lot or just didn't listen very well. the sun got so hot this week. i believe the temp got over 100 degrees a few times. and then it was hard for me to watch so much basketball and not "be" a part of it. BUT!......

It was a good week. I guess these are all things God can use to make me grow. hey thanks again everyone for reading.