Monday, October 06, 2008

EL RETO 2008 (week 4)

Hot, hot, hot! That’s what describes the beginning of week 4. I don’t know what the temperature was, but it had to be over 100 degrees. With no shade, it seems even hotter. We began the activities in Santa Fe where we left off the previous week. After each team had a time of devotions, we all headed down to the soccer field where we had everything set up for a very involved relay race.

As they started at one end of the field, they had to race the length of the field in various different ways to move themselves. First, they had to have five team members hook themselves together and move like a “centipede” 20 yards.
Once the back person had passed the 20 yard mark, another team member had to hop 40 yards in a gunny sack.
Once that person had reached 40 yards, three team members where tied together at the ankles with duct tape and had to run/walk in a four-legged race for 20 more yards.
Once they reached their mark, three more team members went the remaining 20 yards in the form of a wheelbarrow. One person walked on their hands while two other people grabbed one leg each of that person as the “handles” of a wheelbarrow.
Once those three reached the last mark, five team members had to spin around 10 times with their forehead on a stick (traditionally it’s a bat). Once they were done spinning they had to run the length of the field to where they started. This was quite hilarious! Here are some funny pics...








The last person to spin around received a bag full of puzzle pieces of a map of Paul’s missionary journey’s.
Also, they had to situate all 22 cities that are related to his 2nd missionary journey.
If they needed help, they could one by one, run out 20 yards to see map that was already put together. The catch for that was, they needed to spin around 5 times first, and then they could look at the map. Oh, and spin around five more times before heading back to their team’s station.

The first team to actually arrive at their station to start putting together their puzzle won a prize that would be reveiled later on. That team was Los Vencedores (The Overcomers).

The team to finish the puzzle first won the relay race. It took The Overcomers around 45 minutes to finish the puzzle, even then, they won the relay race. The final team finished their puzzle about 15 to 20 minutes later.

From the soccer field in Santa Fe, we got in the vehicles and headed back to Cofradía to give the students some time before their next activity to practice their choreography for next week.

The next activity was led by Mili. I was pretty impressed with her leadership and I could see her directing EL RETO in the future. She has some awesome potential!

The activity was to have one team member paint the face of another team member. They had to paint the logo of this year’s RETO the same way it was painted on Sandy’s face…

The thing that made this interesting was they person painting had to do it blind-folded! The person being painted could only voice help, and not use their hands. There were some pretty interesting faces! In the end, Los Mensajeros (The Messengers) won this event.
The next thing on the agenda was to give the Overcomers their prize for arriving at their station first in the relay race. They had to choose from door #1, door #2, or door #3. They chose door #1 which was a very good choice and they received 500 extra points to use in the next event.
What was behind the other two doors? Door #2=200 pts for their team and 200 pts for another team of their choice; Door #3=NOTHING.

The final event of the day was one that I have been looking forward to for a long time. We had our first RETO AUCTION. Each team was given a small piece of paper with the amount of points they had in order to use in the auction. These were the points that they had at the end of last week; they ranged from less than 900 to over 2,600. If a team wanted to buy something, they had to give up points in order to buy it.

The first item expectedly went really cheap, 50 points! Once everyone saw the ladies bring out three pizzas for them to eat right there, the other teams started bidding! The next item went for over 400 points! No one knew what they were bidding for; each item was inside a tote box and was a surprise for the team who bought it. This was such a fun event that we will absolutely do this again someday!
The Overcomers with their pizza!
Making a bid.
The surprise items that were auctioned off were: cooked pizza (Overcomers-50 pts); Immunity from chores (Messengers-420 pts); adding points to another team’s total (Temerosos The Fearful-270 pts) they were also reimbursed the 270 points they used; a bag of candy (Fearful-650 pts); a bag of chips (Angeles Del Bien Angels of Good-500 pts); a 3 liter bottle of coke (Aguilas The Eagles-600 pts); 500 points (Fearful-550 pts); The final clue to a hidden prize of 1,000 points (Fearful-700 pts); The final clue to the hidden treasure (Messengers-710 pts); Finally, we put a picture of a cruise ship on the outside of the tote box and told them that this was a trip. What they didn’t know was that it was a trip to another town to eat tacos. These tacos are very good, and once they found out where they were going, they cheered with excitement! (Overcomers-700 pts).

This was definitely one of the most exciting things we’ve ever done. There was one team Los Elegidos The Chosen who played it safe and didn’t participate in the auction in order to not loose any points. Needless to say, they came out on top in the week’s final score.
THE VALLEY OF DECISION
Once again we finished the evening in THE VALLEY OF DECISION where each team entered the decision room one at a time to vote for the team of their choice to do chores. The Messengers won immunity during the auction; however, they gave it to The Chosen. So, once again, The Chosen could not receive a vote.
Staff waiting just inside the entrance to the new church where we have held THE VALLEY OF DECISION every week.
Gena and I inside the voting room, waiting for the teams to come in.
"The Chosen" making their vote.
In the end, the Angels of Good received the most votes and had to wash the base trucks the next day.
"The Chosen" showing their vote for "The Angels of Good"
EL RETO UNCOVERED. This was an unusually relaxing week leading up to Saturday in comparison to previous weeks. There was some much needed “down time.” I am impressed with all the staff that has shown up faithfully each week to donate their time to the youth ministry; that is something that encourages me. Everything went really smooth and I am pleased with how things are going.

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