Who Needs Sleep When You've Got Panama (Monday, August 10)

For the precious sake of sleep, this first Panamanian greeting will be kept rather short and sweet. We've earned every last second of tonight's slumber after enduring a long, but very worthwhile, all-nighter that began yesterday at Messiah.

On Sunday night, we anointed the trip with dinner and two hours of on-campus training, through which we spent time with the softball team discussing and praying over the purposes God has stored up for our journey.  Then we began.. the grind, the task of waiting  up until 2am for our bus to arrive and take us to our flight. We spent that time doing what the Messiah baseball team does best: hitting in the cage, balling out on the Hitchcock courts (to nobody's surprise, the sophomores were trounced), adjusting Ty's weight room attire, and traveling to the honorable Baker's diner for our last meal in the States. By the time our bus rolled into Grantham, we had quickly made up time for a summer apart from each other.

We packed the bus with the softball team and headed to BWI, our objective to catch a 6am flight down to Miami. Most of us boarded the plane desperate for sleep, and we achieved that desire during the air time. We touched down in Miami and scored a few moments of layover sleep before starting off on the final leg of our  expedition.

This just about sums up Day One

Panama City welcomed us around 3pm and immediately wrapped us in her stifling, humid embrace, one we'll have to adjust to over the next 8 days. God oversaw a quick and hassle-free jaunt through customs, as we managed to get our seemingly endless supply of donation bags cleared and loaded onto two awaiting mini-buses. Our host, Messiah alum Dan Cotton, and his brother-in-law, former Messiah baseball player Chris Regan, greeted us at the airport and accompanied us back to our home for the week: Casa Paraiso.

The last several hours at Casa Paraiso have been spent settling in, exploring the town of Paraiso, enjoying Panama's blossoming malt beverage industry, joining Dan for orientation, feasting on a "first meal" of Baked Chicken, Rice, and Plantation, making questionable decisions with hair, and worshipping with Chris, our resident guitar expert. We did all this while fighting off the urge to sleep, an urge that grew increasingly dim as we drank in the beauty of our surroundings and chances to converse with our hosts and enjoy their amazing homestead.

              

                  Her majesty the Canal, as viewed from downtown Paraiso

The team heads to a well-deserved sleep ready to wake up tomorrow and start our first full day on Panama soil. We're thankful that our lengthy travels ended in this amazing place, alongside two organizations (Rio Missions and Sport Exchange International) that have planned out an incredible week for us. Hope you'll stay with us both in prayer and through this blog as we head out to serve in the days beyond! This team is all too ready to discover what God has in store for us as we work alongside, play against, and build friendships with our Panamanian brothers and sisters.

This trip is truly going to be Dope Cheese
(for you inquisitive types that's a local term that means awesome)

In Christ,

The Fellas

P.S. We'll get many, many more pictures/videos up in the non-sleep deprived days to come

But for the time being, here's your Picture of the Day

Classic Dice getting the Classic Panamanian Shave