You may be wondering how Concordia and Vanguards Women’s Volleyball teams
ended up taking a mission trip to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Tim Kelly, Erikka
Gulbranson and myself, were on a Bring It Promotions tour in Spain and we got to
talking about all the cool projects that Tim and his friends were working on
in Nicaragua: Projects for the school kids, water filters and stoves for the
community, etc. We knew that we had to take our teams.
What an amazing trip Bring It set up for both our teams. We got to play some
high level volleyball, do our mission work, and have some fun. Life changing,
incredible, and rewarding would describe how our team felt when they ended our
trip.
I think that a lot of players, parents and administrators were a little
concerned about us traveling to third world countries but Tim Kelly and Jo Fielder
made sure to come and talk to our teams before the trip to help everyone
understand what to bring, what to expect, and to make sure that all of our
questions were answered. The nice thing about our trip is that Bring It sets up
everything for you: meals, hotels, buses, matches, all our sight seeing activities,
our matches and our mission work, all we had to do was show up! Besides that
Tim always makes sure to give a history lesson in every city we visited.
Although we were spoiled with our hotel accommodations, meals, and
transportation the best part was that we got to experience all of the cultural aspects
of each city and interact with the local people. The best venue that we played
in was an outdoor court in the middle of San Juan del Sur with about 500 of
the local people who came to watch. Although we did not have our best match it
was our most memorable!
Of course our favorite part of the trip was the day our team split up and did
our mission work. We had groups who cleaned and painted the local clinic,
groups who visited schools and handed out school supplies, a group who traveled
around and handed out books with the mobile library, and a group that planted
trees and learned about the project to get every family a stove. Of course
ending the day on a private beach surfing and swimming made for a perfect day!
Thanks again Tim Kelly and Jo Fielder for all your hard work, sense of humor
and incredibly great tours.
