The Malone University women's basketball is currently in Puerto Rico on a service learning trip. Follow along each day for updates from different members of the team.

Blog Post #1 | August 16, 2022 | Kyli Horn

Today we traveled to Puerto Rico for our team mission trip. We left Malone at 3:30 am to head to the Cleveland Airport. We left Cleveland and flew to New Jersey - 1 hr 30 minute flight - then a 4 hour flight from New Jersey to San Juan. We arrived safely to San Juan around 2 pm, where we met Giovanni and Tim who loaded our luggage and transported us to our resort, Fajardo Inn. Traveling to the resort, we found it very fascinating that gas was 98 cents a gallon, the houses/communities are extremely different than Ohio, and there were a lot of different kinds of shops/restaurants along the sides of the roads. We arrived at our hotel around 4 pm, settled in, and looked around the resort. The pool will definitely be a big hit this week, as it is very nice and big. 

At 5:30 pm we left the resort to go to dinner at TiJuana's Mexican food. Dinner was very good, it was hard to order because the server knew very little English, but Giovanni was able to help translate. From dinner we traveled to a basketball clinic at an outdoor covered basketball court. There were 2 groups of kids when we got there, around 15 boys aging from 8-12 and around 12 older boys aging from 16-20. We shot layups, jump shots and 3-pointers with the little kids, and played knockout - they loved this and getting the team out! We did ballhandling, 1 on 1 drills, 2 on 2 drills, then we played them 5 on 5 half court. Ending the night we played full court with the older boys, everyone enjoyed this, it was fun and competitive.

After this, Brooklyn and Emma spoke with the group about Jesus and his love for them. The boys knew about Jesus and that he died on the cross for us and our sins. It is interesting to hear them speak and what they know and have learned about God and who he is. 

It was a great first day, everyone is excited to play and work/play with he kids and help them grow in their faith and spread God's word. 

We want to say thank you to Jeremy and Bill for driving us to Cleveland airport so early in the morning and to Giovanni and Tim for picking us up and being the leaders of our group for the week.