The Malone University women's basketball team is currently in Puerto Rico on a service learning trip.
Follow along each day for updates from different members of the team.
Blog Post #7 | August 22, 2022 | Emma Kallas
It's Sunday! We headed off to church at 10:45am, but due to gps errors we arrived at church 30 minutes late. This didn't seem to be a problem because the service still had an hour and a half left after we got there!
After that, we headed to find a place to eat lunch with Pastor Albert and his wife. After about an hour excursion finding the perfect place for authentic Puertorican food, we stopped at a seafood restaurant. Pastor ordered us almost all of the appetizers on the menu to make sure we got to experience the cuisine. I personally am a picky eater, but I did enjoy almost everything I tried!
After we got back from lunch, we had a little bit of down time before we headed off to our last game of the trip.
We had the opportunity to play the Puerto Rico national team (including some girls who played in the Olympics for Puerto Rico!). We played at the Coliseo Roberto Clemente Walker, which was an amazing stadium. We had a slow start to the game, but after the first part of the first quarter we started playing more aggressively and intensely. The majority of the game was about a 10 point game, but towards the end we let go a little and ended up falling short.
Even though we lost, this was a once and a lifetime experience for all of us to place in that setting against other players at that level!
After the game, Coach shared a little of her testimony with everyone, we prayed together, and of course, took a picture together.
We then ordered some pizza that we would take back to the hotel with us from a spot in the marina, which is right down the road from our hotel.
Huge shoutout and thank you to Tim and Gio for being our number one supporters this trip and always making sure we got to where we needed to go no matter the circumstances! Shoutout to Gio for some coaching too during the game!! I know all of us are so grateful we got to go through this experience with them and it wouldn't have been the same.
Blog Post #6 | August 21, 2022 | Bri Fitzgerald
Today we got the opportunity to go out and explore Puerto Rico.
Together as a team we all decided that the activity we wanted to do on our free day was snorkeling. We woke up and got ready by 7:20am and headed off to El Kraken where we hopped on a boat. From there, Captain Julianna took us out in the Caribbean where we all snorkeled and had the opportunity to see all sorts of exotic fish, sting rays and coral reef. Then we went on to a lone island and got to swim in the ocean for about 2 hours. The water was crystal blue and we could see all the way to the bottom. El Kraken provided lunch for us that consisted of chicken salad, pasta salad, regular salad and pastries.
Around 12:30 we headed back to dock the boat. While on the boat the crew also educated us with some of the background history of the island that was super interesting. For most of us on the team, this was our first time snorkeling and it was a great experience and super cool that we got to do it together. The crew on the boat were super friendly and made the experience so fun.
We arrived back at the hotel around 1:00pm to relax and get out of the sun for a bit.
We had a few hours of free time where we all got to do our own thing. Some went to swim in the pool and some decided to stay in.
Finally around 6:00pm we headed off to dinner, where we ate at Butaque. It was a Tex Mex style restaurant and was very good!
After dinner the team had a sweet tooth and we all went to get ice cream at Cremaldi. Then to finish our night off we went back to our rooms and had a game night with each other.
Blog Post #5 | August 20, 2022 | Brinn Hunt
Yesterday was day 5 here in Puerto Rico. We had started the day off kind of early. Our team had met up in one of our rooms and we talked about the book we have been reading called: What is the Gospel? It was a very special moment where we all got to say what we felt about that section of the book we read. As well as, hearing how people view things and expressed how we felt about the book together. After we finished our team meeting about the book, our team had an opportunity to work at the church.
In Matthew 16:18 it states: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." We had an opportunity to be apart of putting the church together.
We met with Pastor Albert around 10am. Pastor Albert helped us prepare the new church. We started off our time by each of us choosing a tile and writing something on the back. Some wrote a Bible quote and some of us just wrote something motivational. Once we all finished had that, we took the floor tiles from the upstairs to each room. Each room ranged from 220 tiles to 150 tiles. Once we were done putting the tiles in each room upstairs we went to the downstairs to do the tiles too. This time we didn't have to count the tiles we just unboxed them and scraped them off with the bits of cardboard stuck to them and placed them in the corner area.
Then after a decent amount of time working, Pastor Albert had bought our team lunch. His crew members had made a table for us to eat at. After we all finished up our lunch we decided since we were hot and sweaty from working, that ice cream was the best way to top it off. We got ice cream at Cremaldi.
We had free time when we returned around 2pm. Some of us went to the pool and some of us decided to take a nap and relax.
Later that evening we went to dinner at El Meson at about 5:45pm. Which is a sub place about 10 minutes away from our resort. After we had eaten dinner some of us had gotten ice cream again after dinner. We got back to the rooms and played a game called Codenames as a team.
Overall the day was definitely one to remember. We grew in our faith, helped grow the Kingdom of God, and had fun while doing so.
Blog Post #4 | August 19, 2022 | Nataley Armstrong
Deuteronomy 15:11 states: For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, "You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land."
Yesterday we had the opportunity to live out God's word by assisting some of the less fortunate in the city of Fajardo.
We began our day meeting up with a pastor who led us to places where some of the homeless people in the city reside. Bri shared her testimony with the first group we greeted. Then, we were able to hand out lunches to the group.
The second place we stopped was truly heartbreaking. There were about 10 residents who were living in an abandoned shelter that was very run down. The people here were all of different backgrounds. Some were old and bound to wheelchairs, others seemed to be about our age. Hutch was able to share her testimony to this group. At the end of the day we shared the word of God and handed out lunches to 24 people in the city.
Not only were we able to do some good, but we also learned a lot about how fortunate we are and allowed us to put into perspective all that we have to be thankful for.
After our morning of outreach we headed back to the hotel to relax before our game. We ended up playing at 7:30pm right after a rain storm. We owe a huge thanks to coaches dad, Jeffery, and Geo for moping up the rain dripping onto the court. Thankfully, we were able to come up with another big victory. After the game Coach Reale shared her testimony with the other team. On the car ride back we discussed how games like that remind us of our love for basketball.
At the end of the day we were all pretty exhausted, but for all the right reasons. We were all very grateful for the opportunity to live out God's word by giving back to the community of Fajardo and for the opportunity to play the game that we love.
Blog Post #3 | August 18, 2022 | Erin Kaufman
We woke up early to leave the Fajardo at 7:45. We then began our 2 hour journey to the orphanage. Once we got there, we began to color, make bracelets, and play outside with the children. We gifted them some stuffed animals, toys, and some coloring supplies. Instantly, the children wormed there way into our hearts. Sadly after three hours, we had to leave the children. Even tho we had to leave our prayers are always with them. We all learned that we have to be grateful for what we have and love everyone as your neighbor.
We had a family style lunch at a local Puerto Rican restaurant. We ate rice, beans, chicken, steak and chorizo. We also tried some plantains.
We then traveled back to San Juan to start the second half of our day. We walked the streets and shopped. Once we all got our souvenirs, we then got back into the van and traveled to the court to play our game.
Once we finished playing, Nataley shared her testimony to the group and so did Pastor Albert. We loved hearing their stories about how they let God enter their life. Shortly after their testimonies, we started asking the other players questions. This lead to us joking and laughing for the next 20 minutes. We tried learning how to pronounce each of the other players names. One player would break down the pronunciation and then put it all together, but there was always one name we couldn't pronounce right. Our pronunciations had the other team in laughing fits. We then shared our social media information so we could stay in touch.
We then left to go get a quick supper at McDonald's because most of the restaurants were closing. After we got our food, we traveled back to the Fajardo so we could shower and get a good nights rest.
Blog Post #2 | August 17, 2022 | Alexis Hutchison
Today we woke up around 10am and went to brunch at a small local restaurant called Brunchy's. The food, coffee, and service was phenomenal.
After we finished, we headed back to our hotel and relaxed by the pool. We played basketball, did handstand competitions, and laughed our hearts out.
We finished at the pool and headed to do a basketball clinic. The kids were so excited when we walked in. They ranged from 6-10 years old. We worked on ball handling, shooting, passing, and dunking. Yes… dunking. We spoke about the Gospel and asked if they knew who Jesus was, and they did. We reiterated to them that Jesus died on the cross for us, loves us even if we sin, and He is proud of us for who we are.
When we were shooting with the little boys, one of them hadn't made a shot yet and we were all cheering him on every time it was his turn. He stepped up, shot and finally made it - everyone went crazy and wanted to give him a high five. He beelined straight over to his parents in the bleachers and gave them high fives before he came back to high five everyone else. We loved seeing how excited he got, definitely one of our favorite moments of the clinic.
Ending the night, we went to eat at El Brindi's, which was located on a strip near the ocean. The food was great, most of us got chicken or fish tacos. Overall the day was very good! We are looking forward to working with more kids, playing basketball against other college teams, and spreading the Gospel.
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.
